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THE EARNEST EXPECTATION 



THE EARNEST 
EXPECTATION 



By 

ISAAC CROOK, D. D., LL. D. 

Author of "Jonathan Edwards" 




CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 



3X% 35>3 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 4 1905 

Copyright Entry 
~l^(ns. X 3. /906~ 
CLASS Oc XXc. No. 

/ 3/ ? 3 3 

COPY B. 



COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY 
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 



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PREFACE 



The following sermons have been 
suggested by many of the rarest 
hearers as well as the finest preachers 
in Methodism, six of whom have fur- 
nished volumes in this series. 





CONTENTS 




SERMON 




PAGE 


I. 


Through the Problem of Evil, - 


II 


II. 


Through Outward Disaster, - 


24 


III. 


Amid the Triumphs of Wrong, 


36 


IV. 


In Spite of Opposers, 


55 


V. 


By Way of the Juniper-Tree, 


64 


VI. 


Through the Great Eclipse, 


85 


VII. 


Through the Wrath of the Lamb, 


95 


VIII. 


Into the New Jerusalem, 


105 



I. 



THROUGH THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 

"The earnest expectation of the creation waiteth 
for the revealing of the Sons of God." — Rom. 
viii, 19. 

As an interpretation of this text, one found 
in a subsequent verse says, "The whole creation 
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." 

Here is announced the Gospel of Hope. It were 
easy to become bewildered in a world of specula- 
tion concerning the narrow and the wider meaning 
of this text. By that folly much time has been 
wasted and many a sermon rendered useless. 
Life is too earnest, human suffering too intense, 
and our Gospel hope too glorious to allow us to 
be diverted from the main purpose of Paul in 
making these statements. 

We might call this the "evolution" of the king- 
dom of God had not that word been somewhat 
overworked. We prefer to name it "The Glorious 
Expectation." It is supported by such Scriptures 

11 



i2 The Earnest Expectation. 



as — "This light affliction worketh for us a far more 

exceeding and eternal weight of glory," and "Now 
are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be, but we shall be like Him ; for we 
shall see Him as He is." 

I. First, let us consider the scope of the mean- 
ing of the word "creation." Is it identical with 
the word "creature" in the twenty-second verse? 
Many of the best exegetes so believe. 

That great Greek scholar and luminous inter- 
preter of Scripture, the late Professor William 
G. Williams, confines the meaning of the word 
to our physical manhood, and disputes its applica- 
tion to anything outside of human nature. He 
thus sweeps away all views including the vegetable 
and animal world in the curse of sin. 

Mr. Wesley, in the opposite extreme, has left 
us a sermon on "The Cause and Cure of Earth- 
quakes." My boy friend had caught that view 
when he severely denounced father Adam for 
eating the apple, and so making it necessary for 
boys to fight weeds and brambles. Older and more 
learned children have believed that death, entering 
the world by sin, passed into all animal life, in- 
cluding even the fossils in the rocks. Is not this 
extreme literalism? 



Through the Problem of Evil. 13 

May not criticism go too far in the other direc- 
tion? The very learned critic, Professor Williams, 
from whom to differ would seem to smack of 
conceit and irreverence, draws the entire meaning 
of this passage into a Greek phrase in the eight- 
eenth verse, translated "To usward." This phrase 
he uses like a narrow channel through which 
to run the whole passage, both text and context. 
Is this not venturesome for even so masterly a 
scholar and so devout a saint? 

Our loyalty must swing to Paul, and on beyond 
him to the wider visions of idealism as interpreted 
by human experience, as well as by the consensus 
of great expositors. Creation is greater than critic, 
philosopher, or apostle. 

It may not be that the mammoth and the mol- 
lusk began to die when Adam sinned, for serpents 
and thorns then appear for the first time. It 
may not be that the earnest expectation of the 
creature gives promise that Bucephalus is to appear 
in heaven, or that crocodiles shall play harmless 
in the glassy sea before the throne. 

But may it not be that sin struck our home 
so violently as to damage and demoralize it ? That 
which fell on Eden, vague and mysterious (mys- 
tical, if you prefer), may have accomplished wide- 



14 The Earnest Expectation. 

spread ruin and hurt. When it finally struck the 
Lamb of Calvary there was darkness and earth- 
quake, the rocks and the tombs were rent amid the 
wailing of sinful men. The creation groaned and 
travailed. 

Whether the curse of sin involved the crea- 
tion outside of man or not, we do know that it is 
the inhabitant who largely gives character to the 
home. A saint can turn a hut into a palace, while 
a human devil can render a royal house a very hell. 

No human saintliness prevents pain, wasting, 
heartbreak, and dying. "We groan within our- 
selves." We do see war among the elements in 
God's world. Let those mysteries we call carbon 
and oxygen come together, and the touch of a 
match will destroy a city block. Let them meet 
in the bowels of the earth, then farewell to the 
homes of man. Let an angry peasant hurl an 
epithet at a Russian officer, and there follows a 
convulsion which shakes the throne of the Czar. 
Fire a single shot, and hundreds of thousands of 
lives are destroyed amid all the horrors of war. 
Let the grain or the fruits but ferment, and then 
touch the palate of thirst in weak men, and there 
follows the march of hundreds of thousands of 
victims to drunkards' graves amid all the horrors 



Through the; Problem of Evil. 15 



of broken vows, ruined homes, and crushed hearts. 
Cowper voiced a sublime protest : 

"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, 
Some boundless contiguity of shade, 
Where rumor of oppression and deceit, 
Of unsuccessful or successful war, 
Might never reach me more! My ear is pained, 
My soul is sick, with every day's report 
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is -filled!" 

The problem of evil has been grappled, but 
never solved. Butler has thrown some light upon 
it in his '"Analogy." Professor Naville has ac- 
complished about all that philosophy may achieve 
in that solution. Job cried out amidst its dark- 
ness, "O that Thou wouldst hide me in Sheol till 
Thy wrath be past!" It is confronted in this 
Epistle to the Romans. John, in the Apocalypse, 
beheld the "smoke of torment ascending up for 
ever." Christ Himself cried out from Calvary, 
"Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" 

The same darkness surrounds every withering 
flower, every broken-winged bird, every beast of 
prey, every crippled child, every drowned boy, every 
youth cut down in his young manhood ; it overhangs 
every cemetery, and has turned the earth into a 
graveyard of human hopes and ambitions, until its 



16 Th^ Earnest Expectation. 

voice seems to break upon the darkening heavens, 
"groaning and travailing in pain until now." 

Paul has been called the logician, and such he 
is: but he is far more. In the best sense, he is 
a rhetorician. He appeals to the intellect and the 
judgment; but beyond that, like all other Scrip- 
ture writers, he addresses the imagination. No 
man can understand the sacred Scriptures who re- 
presses this faculty of the soul. 

The power of attention resembles the eagle's 
talons. The power of will is like its spine. The 
imagination is like the wings, whereby flight is 
had heavenwards. By ignoring this faculty, sad 
havoc has been made in dogmatic theology. 

In this Epistle and especially in the seventh, 
eighth, and ninth chapters, great use is made of 
symbolic speech and comprehensive metaphor. 
While it may be conceded that human nature is 
personified as the center of the subject in hand, 
more comprehensive personifications sweep around 
creation. 

Our text reminds one of that strange Egyptian 
ideal embodied in the Sphinx. There it has stood 
in the sands for thousands of years, a mighty lion- 
shaped form, crouching amid the drift that gathers 
around as if to bury it. That verges into a human 



Through the; Problem of Evil. 17 

neck and head, solemnly and sublimely looking 
away over the horizon, as if in expectation of the 
dawn of some better day. It seems to say, "The 
earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the 
revealing of the sons of God." 

The gifted Greek made a Sphinx more suggest- 
ive than that of Egypt. It also had the lion form 
of strength, the wings for speed, and a woman's 
bosom of nutrition, with face and eyes looking afar. 
Thebes had incurred its wrath. A riddle was 
propounded. Should any undertake to solve and 
fail, he was at once devoured. And are not curi- 
ous minds swallowed up in this mystery of crea- 
tion? But when CEdipus guessed that the animal 
which walks on four feet in the morning, on two 
at noon, on three at night, was man, then the 
defeated Sphinx swallowed itself. Is it not so that 
mystery is retiring within itself before human in- 
telligence, enlightened from Divine wisdom? 

Whether this world shall constitute the new 
heaven and the new earth of the better time com- 
ing, or we shall be transferred to some other 
sphere, is most interesting speculation; but noth- 
ing can be proven. Could there be a hundred 
generations of sinlessness on this globe, it is doubt- 
ful whether any could desire a better eternal home. 
2 



1 8 The Earnest Expectation. 



Hope at least includes this outer world in this 
"Expectation." 

II. The main drift of thought in these chap- 
ters of Paul is confined to the conflict going on 
within human nature itself; between the flesh and 
the Spirit. "If we live after the flesh, we shall 
die; if after the Spirit, we shall live." "The flesh 
is under the law," and there is no salvation in 
that direction. Christ took upon Him the "same- 
ness" of the flesh, and became obedient unto death 
so as to free them who are Christ's from the law 
and its penalty. They are, therefore, at liberty 
to live after the Spirit. They come into touch with 
the Holy Spirit, and as He says, "As many as are 
led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of 
God." "If sons, then heirs; heirs of God, joint 
heirs with Jesus Christ, having received the adop- 
tion whereby we cry, Abba, Father." 

Reverting to an earlier chapter, we find Paul 
summing up in behalf of humanity under sin and 
the law, defeated and bound, crying, "O wretched 
man that I am! who shall deliver me from the 
body of this death?" Turning to the other side, 
he exclaims, "Thanks be to God through Jesus 
Christ." 

It is in the sweep of this mighty current of 



Through the Problem of Evil. 19 



inspiration that there appears to us the whole crea- 
tion "groaning and travailing in pain together 
until now," and then the same creation (ktisis), 
looking for the "manifestation of the sons of God." 

" That one far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves." 

We must not miss the chief benefit of this great 
revelation. It comes even closer home to us in 
that sentence of Paul's., "We groan within our- 
selves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the re- 
demption of our body." Here is a war between 
the flesh and the Spirit, of which every awakened 
man is fully conscious. The higher he rises into 
the light, the more insistently will he inquire, "Who 
shall deliver us ?" 

The word "sincere" means, literally, without 
wax: like honey strained till no shred of comb 
prevents its transparency. The sincerest Chris- 
tians discover within themselves tendencies, am- 
bitions, antagonisms, capabilities of sedition, which 
may spring in a night like evil weeds in the finest 
garden. 

Who of us have not dreams in which we are 
compelled to wade through slime and grime, forced 
to appear in public with garments befouled, until 



2o The Earnest Expectation. 



we awake from very torment? And who of us 
have not, when the waking comes, raised the ques- 
tion, "Do we so appear before God, with all our 
purposed righteousness and avowed sincerity?" 
"Our righteousness seems but filthy rags." Then 
we "groan and travail in pain." 

Nor does it relieve the case when we look at 
men who, having accepted the Gospel and its 
Savior so heartily as to leap clear, apparently, from 
the pool of sin, they exult and rejoice aloud; even 
pitying their brethren whom they regard on a lower 
plane. How often one can not rely on even them 
to keep their promises or control their tongues! 
Nor can we stop at them. Did not the apostle 
Peter, after the Transfiguration and the Holy 
Communion, curse and swear? Did not James 
and John aim to circumvent their brethren in 
office-seeking? Did not Paul, after the Pentecost, 
denounce Peter as a trimmer? Seeing these things 
are so, what is to become of me if I submit to the 
service of the flesh? "If ye live after the flesh, 
ye shall die." Where are the people not in danger 
of heading deathwards? This is our battleground. 

Thorwaldsen did not mean to illustrate this 
battle when he carved his Lion of Lucerne. In 
that grotto is a wall of sandstone jutting out from 



Through the Problem op Evil. 21 



the Alps, and on the stone is carved a mighty lion 
twenty-eight feet in length. He lies limp and 
prone, with his sorrowful head resting upon his 
paw, which covers the French lily, and one can 
almost hear him groan, so sad and sick is his noble 
face. The legend commemorates the bravery and 
fidelity of the Swiss Guard which fell in the de- 
fense of the Tuileries. The broken arrow pierc- 
ing through his vitals shows why he died. So 
may the Gospel arrow strike your evil and mine 
to the death, that we may live unto God. 

"If ye through the Spirit do put to death the 
deeds of the body, ye shall live.'' 

"Waiting!" "How long, O Lord, how long?" 
Paul in the flesh has lain a long time there outside 
of Rome; far longer Moses where the angels 
buried him; longer yet, Abraham at Machpelah. 
"Where is the promise of His coming?" How the 
dead slip out of our lives by the flight of time, 
and make the manifestation remote! "One day 
is as a thousand years to the Lord ; so may it be to 
those who have departed and are with Him, which 
is far better." 

If in presenting thus meagerly a few hints at 
the unspeakable richness of this revelation I can 



22 The Earnest Expectation. 



induce any to re-examine it so as to catch some- 
thing of its flood of light upon our dark path- 
way, I have not written in vain. 

My first primer taught me that "In Adam's 
fall, we sinned all." I could not then admit the 
charge, nor can I yet. In fact, I have been in-' 
clined to answer it by saying, "In Cain his mur? 
der, we sinned furder." One is as true as the 
other. Every man born into the world comes 
with a double inheritance: one, the sinwardness of 
Adam's nature; the other, the profTer of salvation 
through the Second Adam. God is too just and 
too good not to give every man a fair chance, and 
more. 

This theme was presented on the occasion of 
the monthly lecture before the Ohio Wesleyan 
University, and met with most cordial approval 
from that great preacher, President Charles H. 
Payne. It was afterwards presented in the Uni- 
versity Lecture at College Park, California, while 
yet under the shadow of an unspeakable bereave- 
ment. And if it shall throw any corresponding 
light into the life of any reader, I shall have 
reached my highest ambition. Together we adopt 
the assurance, "I am persuaded that neither death, 



Through the: Problem of Evil. 23 

nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, 
nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able 
to separate us from the love of God, which is in 
Christ Jesus our Lord." 

"In pain until now, looking for the manifesta- 
tion," begun, continuing, completed. 



II. 



THROUGH OUTWARD DISASTER. 

"In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king 
kept the city of the Damascenes with a garri- 
son desirous to apprehend me; and through a 
window, was I let down in a basket by the 
wall, and escaped his hands." — 2 Cor. xi, 32, 33. 

"I will appear unto thee, delivering thee from the 
people, and the Gentiles, unto whom I send 
thee." — Acts xxvi, 17. 

"The angel of Jehovah campeth round about them 
that fear Him, and deliver eth them." — Psa. 
xxxiv, 7. 

The: first passage quoted is the text. The two 
following its interpretation. 

The sermon here reproduced has proven serv- 
iceable on a number of Commencement occasions. 

The scene presented, showing Paul in a basket, 
corresponds to graduation from the modern theo- 
logical school. The primary education of Paul 
took place in his native city, Tarsus. It was, at 

24 



Through Outward Disaster. 25 

that time, one of three literary centers of the world, 
only rivaled by Athens and Alexandria. 

His further education, corresponding to a 
course in our colleges, especially denominational 
in their character, took place in Jerusalem under 
the training of Gamaliel. In so far as the Faculty 
is known, he constituted the main part of it. The 
truth still remains that a college consists more 
in professor than in apparatus. How one studies 
and under whose direction, rather than what one 
studies, determines the value in results. 

Saul must have felt himself equipped for his 
life-work. He was possibly a member of the San- 
hedrin, for he says concerning Stephen, "I gave 
my vote against him." He seems to have exer- 
cised the function of prosecuting attorney, or 
inquisitor general, and, having obtained letters from 
the high priest, went forth to a "foreign city, 
Damascus." 

God saw that he needed post-graduate prepara- 
tion for his life-work. This consisted of two essen- 
tials, — first, his regeneration. This, for the present, 
we pass over. He must retire for three years into 
Arabia for training. We do not know that he 
had any other teachers than the Scriptures he 
had so woefully mistaken, and private research 



26 The Earnest Expectation. 



under the enlightening of the Holy Spirit; but 
when he came back from those three years, he re- 
sumed the work of preaching on the scene of his 
conversion, Damascus. The other apostles seemed 
to have enjoyed some of them, at least the element- 
ary education common to the Jewish boy; and 
for their secondary training, a three years' course 
under the most masterful teacher of all the world, 
Jesus of Nazareth. They further enjoyed the 
teaching of the Spirit, "who took of these things 
and showed them unto them." 

Saul, like most of our modern preachers of 
the Gospel, needed that three years' Arabian train- 
ing. It did not rob him of intensity or heroism; 
we need not fear for the outcome of Boston, Drew, 
Garrett, so long as they send out their classes sing- 
ing, as they repeatedly do at their Commencement 
occasions, 

"Faith of our fathers, glorious faith, 
We will be true to thee till death." 

There may seem some oddity in the selection of 
this event in Paul's life for a sermon. Not for that 
would we choose it. Often the preacher brings a 
meaning from outside, and puts it into the text; 
or he may draw a lesson from it, overlooking the 
real purpose for which it was written. Can we not 



Through Outward Disaster. 



27 



find the purpose of Paul by noting where he puts 
this scene ? 

In his letter to the Corinthians, this incident is 
between the parts of a double climax. 

I. It stands as the lowest step in a series of 
more than twenty humiliations which he mentions. 
Let us name them rapidly. He admits his abase- 
ments : "Rude in speech;" "self-support;" "fool- 
ish;" "in prisons oft;" "in stripes;" "in deaths 
oft;" "five times thirty-nine stripes;" "thrice beaten 
with rods ;" "stoned ;" "thrice shipwrecked ;" "night 
and a day in the deep ;" "journeyings often ;" "river 
perils;" "robber perils;" "of the Gentiles;" "in 
the city;" "in the wilderness;" "by sea;" "from 
traitors;" "travail;" "hunger;" "thirst;" "fast- 
ing;" "nakedness;" "care of the Churches;" "sym- 
pathy with the weak and suffering;" "in weak- 
ness;" and here at the bottom of all, a "fugitive 
by night in a basket." Possibly the climax might 
be inverted so as to make this humiliating flight 
the diamond-point or flashlight on the dark. 

II. From this terminal point in his catalogue 
of abasements he turns to his exaltations, "into 
the third heaven," where he heard things unutter- 
able; so outside of himself as to endanger his hu- 
mility, requiring "the thorn in the flesh." 



28 The: Earnest Expectation. 



This Commencement scene, launching him 
upon his life-work, is full of many an impressive 
lesson. It might suggest the value of literary 
training in childhood, and of industrial education. 
Like all Jewish youth, he had a trade ; his was tent- 
making. Further, he knew the law of his land, 
civil and religious, and was an intense patriot. 
There is abundant evidence of an increasing growth 
of such manhood in our own country. More impor- 
tant to him and the world was his religions enlight- 
enment, at Damascus and in Arabia, preparing for 
the most important human career aside from that 
of the man of Galilee. Nor did he undertake this 
work as a novice ; he was approaching the age 
of forty. It is not always best to be in haste. 

John Knox was over forty before the world 
knew him, but had time to become acquainted with 
the papacy. After that, two years at the galleys 
taught him the lesson of prayer. Then banish- 
ment, the use of the sword of the Spirit, so that 
his last thirteen years might be effective. 

What was there in that escape by the wall of 
Damascus making it worthy of such prominence 
in Paul's letter to Corinth? 

It was a retreat before danger, always difficult 
for a brave man. Soldiers hear the command of 



Through Outward Disaster. 29 

retreat with dismay. It hurts a moral hero still 
more. To flee from Jezebel to-day is to be ask- 
ing for death to-morrow. For Paul to be let out 
of a lodge on a wall in a basket, and away into the 
Hark, what could be more humiliating? Others 
since have known the bitterness of death when 
necessity has demanded retirement from some great 
field of battle in the leadership of a college, a 
reform, a Church, or a business, and have been 
ready to cry out, "All Thy waves and Thy billows 
have gone over me," or "Why hast Thou for- 
saken me ?" 

Draw near to the scene on the wall at 
Damascus that night. The armed guard was on 
the watch, and might have been seen through the 
dimness of the night. They represented a very 
old-time and common argument against truth, 
"Kill him;'' 1 the argument that has never gone out 
of use from that day to this. It has furnished the 
Inquisition and supplied its counterpart when 
Protestants, after having seized upon their own 
liberty, have also snatched away that of those who 
disagreed with them. More than we are aware 
of, our motives are expressed by "We forbade 
him because he followeth not us." Paul himself 



30 The Earnest Expectation. 



had come to that city three years before, armed 
with the same argument; and now it is turned 
against him in the form of a literal Damascus 
blade in the hands of the guard desirous to appre- 
hend him. 

We have called this a Commencement scene. 
That suggests a contrast. The scene had its ele- 
ments of interest and beauty, and might have ap- 
pealed to the graduate under other circumstances. 
From the top of that wall, secreted doubtless in 
one of the lodges still found there, Paul might 
have heard the music of the rivulets flowing amidst 
dense verdure from the Abana, as it divides to turn 
that city into a garden-spot of the earth. It is 
so to-day as it was then. True, there were no 
bouquets for the graduate that night, yet the 
flowers were near at hand ; the fragrance of orange- 
bloom and damask roses was wafted, then as now, 
upon the quiet night air. There could be no music 
furnished by orchestra or cornet. The night-bird 
may have taught its lesson of faith and trust. The 
audience was small. We know not who they were, 
but most likely Ananias, who three years before 
had called him "Brother Saul," and baptized him; 
possibly Judas had left his house in the street 
called Straight — a street that has outlasted many 



Through Outward Disaster. 31 

a generation; and others whose names are in the 
Book of Life were there to save his life. 

A basket of twisted rope is at hand, possibly 
used to carry figs or fish. Not very large quarters 
for a passenger; but the man himself was "mean 
in bodily presence/' likely not larger than Isaac 
Watts or John Wesley; but it was the greatest 
cargo that ever issued from Damascus. No Gen- 
eral Naaman with Syrian army ever went from 
Damascus so to affect the destinies of mankind as 
he who went out that night. 

From the over jutting window of the lodge, 
see him silently lowered. Those hands holding 
that rope must have been watched over by "the 
angel of the Lord, who campeth round about them 
that fear Him, and delivereth them." It would 
be joy enough in all their after life to recount 
the events of that night, and to glory in having 
had a hand on that rope. So by prayer the tenants 
held the rope for Princeton, the women for Oberlin 
College and the religious institutions of the nation. 
So, in closet and family altars, sons are launched. 
Would that more were ministers! 

When men graduate in our day, they can 
sometimes even afford to leave Alma Mater in a 
palace car; but if too poor and obliged to foot 



32 The: Earnest Expectation. 



it, there is encouragement to know that Paul gradu- 
ated from a lodge on a wall, and started in a basket, 
stealing away in the darkness on his way toward 
Jerusalem, where he arrived after a journey of 
one hundred and forty-seven miles, requiring 
nearly a week, furnished it may be with a lunch 
and wallet. Before taking final leave, he may 
have turned aside for a moment for a look at 
the place over which many a modern has sung, — 

"O hallowed hour, O sacred spot, 

Where love Divine first found me; 
Wherever falls my distant lot, 
My heart shall linger round thee." 

He likely crossed the Jordan at the foot of 
the Sea of Galilee, now illuminated by the mem- 
ory of Him who had walked its waters, and had 
calmed a storm within his own soul. When his 
southward journey brought him in sight of Mount 
Zion, he would now understand the end of sacri- 
fices, and Calvary would be to him the light of the 
world, while the spot of the martyr Stephen's death 
Would again convince him that he was the "chief 
of sinners." 

Our first text is interpreted by the second, 
"I will deliver thee," and this anchors back into 
the other, "The angel of Jehovah campeth round 
about them that fear Him, and delivereth them." 



Through Outward Disaster. 33 

It may be trite to say, "A man is immortal 
till his work is done;" but who can tell what his 
work may be, and when it is ended? It is doubt- 
ful whether the end ever comes. 

God will chose His workmen if they will allow, 
and He will see to it that no weapon formed against 
them shall prosper in the doing of it. He has a 
wonderful way of bringing men together. You 
may start out on some Divine errand, seeing only 
your side of the case, but the man who is to 
meet you may be unknown. See how it was with 
Peter, — apparently at his wits' end on the house- 
top at Joppa, little knowing that forty miles away 
was a Roman soldier, by fasting and prayer pre- 
paring to open the door to Peter. Here is Saul 
starting on the apparently hopeless flight, aimlessly, 
so far as we know, toward Jerusalem; but at 
that end is Barnabas, ready to introduce him to 
the apostles and Peter. Nor did such conjunction 
of men and means ever fail in his life, nor scan 
they fail so long as our triple text remains true. 

Be it ours therefore, never to say "Can't." "All 
things are possible to him that believeth." This 
is pre-eminently important in these days of "open- 
door emergency" and "aggressive evangelism." 

His commission was clear, his aggressiveness 
3 



34 The Earnest Expectation. 



unconquerable. The first must obtain, if the ranks 
of the Christian ministry are not to dwindle and 
perish. Our aggressiveness must not lose its 
edge in mere platitudes about practical Christianity. 
It is important for us to enforce the doctrine, 
"Inasmuch as you did it unto one of these, ye 
did it unto Me ;" but, for the sake of emphasis, 
the evangelism which convicts of sin and secures 
repentance and pardon may be overshadowed and 
discounted in behalf of material charity. We are 
endangered by installing Shakespeare, Browning, 
Goethe, and Emerson as though equals of the 
prophets and apostles in authority. We read it 
in romance, hear it in sermons, and find it in edi- 
torial columns and university lectures. 

Some years ago a small coterie of Church 
members and outsiders in the capital city of Ohio 
made it known that they would teach the orthodox 
Churches a lesson. They went about the work 
of helping the poor and needy with a beautiful 
enthusiasm and refinement; they secured a man in 
the pulpit who, as their leader, blew a loud trum- 
pet, but it lacked what Congregational Unitarian- 
ism has found a fatal omission. There was really 
no aggressive Gospel in their preaching. The last 
time I saw their prophet, he was walking the 



Through Outward Disaster. 35 

streets with an appearance as sad as his seedy 
garments. Our Gospel is mightily braced with 
good works on one side, and intellectuality on the 
other. But the entering wedge is a Gospel of 
"power and the Holy Spirit and much fullness." 
The earnest expectation of the creation looks for- 
ward from storm and prison and martyrdom, but 
none the less from the window, in a basket by the 
wall. There was yet a fourth Commencement for 
Paul: "I have -finished my course" that is for you 
and me and all. Be it ours to say as truly as could 
he, "Lhave kept the faith." 

"O that each in the day 
Of his coming may say, 

I have fought my way through; 
I have finished the work 

Thou didst give me to do." 



III. 



AMID THE TRIUMPHS OF WRONG. 

"To them that love God all things work together 
for good, even to them that are called accord- 
ing to His purpose." — Rom. viii, 28. 

When at Bphesus Paul said, "After I have been 
there [Jerusalem], I must also see Rome," — 
Acts xix, 21, 22. 

In these Scriptures we have the theory and the 
practice ; how did it work in the speaker's case ? 

We may name our subject Providence through 
Disaster. 

Introductory. 

When this theme first took hold on the writer, 
he was specially encouraged to discuss it by 
Bishop McCabe and the late Dr. Mendenhall, editor 
of the Methodist Review. After preaching on the 
subject, words of sincere appreciation came from 
eminent men like Professor L. D. McCabe and a 
distinguished writer and preacher of the Methodist 
36 



Amid the Triumphs op Wrong. 



37 



Episcopal Church, South, as well as equally mer- 
itorious toilers who are not conspicuous. 

We trust a still higher motive leads to the 
publication of the sermon. To present fine work- 
manship in preaching may be to fail; far better 
to help men, if need be, through defective ser- 
monizing. 

I. Divine Providence is too vast and serious 
for us to prate about as if we knew. Who could 
trust to it were it within our narrow compre- 
hension ? 

It may help a very little to say that there are 
two kinds of Providence, Active and Permissive. 
In the one, God is cause and executor ; in the other 
He permits. 

1. This latter recognizes the reign of law as 
a method of Divine Providence. 

It also provides for freedom of choice in moral 
beings. 

This once more confronts the problem of evil, 
unavoidable and unsolved from our side of it. 
To exist at all it must be under Divine permission 
ff God be God. 

2. Active Providence seems clearer to us. Hu- 
man will determines, and, by the use of intelligence, 
causes things to come to pass. The late Dr. 



38 Ths Earnest Expectation. 

Stevens, Methodist historian, in a personal letter, 
advised, "Trust in Divine Providence, and count 
yourself one link in the chain." 

God, with infinite wisdom, power, and good- 
ness, however, does and must actively provide. 

Here his child is again dazed. The greatest 
and choicest of men have debated about fore- 
knowledge, foreordination, and fatalism, with a 
positiveness only becoming Omniscience, but with 
confusion in logic from which, in practice, they 
have fallen back into obedience and brotherhood. 

Long ago Moses footed it up, when he said, 
"Secret things belong unto Jehovah, our God; 
but the things that are revealed belong to us and 
to our children forever." 

II. Divine Providence is plainly not a process 
of coddling calculated to produce overgrown babes 
or weaklings. We err in teaching or acting upon 
that supposition. The word " Providential 99 is 
flippantly tossed about in conversation and in com- 
ment on current events. It is heard in the pulpit, 
and repeated in print, to the confusion of young 
and old, because untrue. It is not the equivalent of 
made easy. 

The keenest blade and the purest gold come 
through fire. Men of the type of Moses and Eli- 



Amid the Triumphs op Wrong. 39 

jah, of Joshua and Gideon, of Daniel and Plaul, 
come up through great tribulation. It must be so, 
my reader, with you and me. Map out life, draw 
a line across the years ; put the delights on one 
side, and the afflictions on the other, the latter have 
been the most fruitful. 

It is comparatively easy, both in and out of 
the pulpit, to recite 

"Right is right, since God is God, 
And Right the day must win; 
To doubt would be disloyalty, 
To falter would be sin." 

This morning I woke to see a face look out 
of a picture with a latent smile. Why should that 
boy of twelve, so finely organized and rarely gifted, 
consecrated in childhood, have been drowned in 
the Mississippi River? Near by, from another 
frame on the wall, there look out at me the large, 
serious eyes of Bishop Thoburn ; they speak of mil- 
lions to be won from heathenism by his ministry. It 
is not easy to set aside the sorrow of the contrast 
by quoting a stanza or a Scripture passage. The 
late Dr. Russel B. Pope said to me, "In my be- 
reavement it only added agony to grief, when con- 
dolence was pressed upon me." Long ago Job 
s&id, "Miserable comforters are ye all." 



40 The: Earnest Expectation. 



Our hero, Paul, in a catalogue of his afflic- 
tions, used the word "perils" eight successive times 
while approaching the declaration, "If I must needs 
glory, I will glory in the things that concern my 
weakness.'' 

This journey from Ephesus to Rome could 
then be made in sailing vessels in a month's time; 
it took five years, two of them spent in prison at 
Caesarea. His imprisonment in Rome, most likely, 
destroyed his prospect of seeing Spain. The ex- 
perience of those five years illustrates our theme 
in concrete form, Providence; through Disaster. 

Were we to choose a favorite subject of Divine 
Providence, here is the man; naturally so gifted 
as to loom above men like Mont Blanc above the 
Alps. Commissioned with a Divine message to 
all the world, an "ambassador" from heaven, why 
should he not be attended by an angelic body- 
guard, "and the stars in their courses fight for 
him?" Where a chosen vessel like this man with 
a heavenly treasure says, "In stripes above meas- 
ure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of 
the Jews five times received I forty stripes save 
one. Thrice beaten with rods ; once stoned ; thrice 
I suffered shipwreck ; a night and a day in the deep ; 



Amid the: Triumphs oe Wrong. 41 

in journeyings often; in peril of waters, perils of 
robbers, perils by my countrymen, perils by the 
heathen, perils in the city, perils in the wilderness, 
perils in the sea, perils among false brethren ; weari- 
ness, painfulness, watchings, hunger and thirst, fast- 
ings, cold, nakedness; beside those things that are 
without, that which cometh upon me daily, the Care 
of all the Churches," — in view of this, we must 
revise any theories of a coddling Providence, and 
readjust our lives or go down under calamity. 

Providence: also takes time. It required three 
years in the school of the Master for the twelve 
apostles; five years for this journey to Rome; forty 
years for Moses in the wilderness; over four hun- 
dred years for Abraham's posterity in Egypt; 
fourteen centuries from the Lamb on the altar 
in the Tabernacle to the one on Calvary. In the 
visions of the Apocalypse, those slain for the word 
of God are heard crying, "How long, O Lord, 
dost Thou not avenge our blood?" 

I. Ho eor Rome! 

Though no amateur traveler, he was prepared 
to see and appreciate the great, attractive mistress 
of the world, but his ambitions rose above that, 
for fruit and fellowship. 



42 The Earnest Expectation. 



He mapped out his route definitely by way 
of Macedonia, Achaia, and Greece ; then Jerusa- 
lem, and after that Rome. 

1. Had he looked backward, he might have 
seen how very uncertain are human plans. At 
Damascus gate, long ago, all his ambitions and re- 
ligious views went down when he was, possibly, 
unhorsed and blinded. 

2. Instead of Jerusalem, he must go to Arabia 
for three years. 

3. Then he escaped by a wall at night in a 
basket, as he faced the world. 

4. His hopes of preaching in Jerusalem were 
snuffed out by an order, "Far hence to the 
Gentiles." 

5. Barnabas, who sought him out for work in 
Antioch, broke with him in a dispute over his own 
nephew, Mark. 

6. Worshiped at Lystra for Mercury, he was 
left for dead at Iconium. 

7. He planned a visit. Every door in Asia was 
shut by the Divine Hand, except Macedonia. 

8. After having planted the Gospel in Europe 
at Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, and Athens, 
coming at last to Ephesus, the metropolis of Asia, 
he saw the books of sorcery burned and idolatrous 



Amid the Triumphs of Wrong. 43 



shrines falling out of market. In that noonday 
sunlight lurks the tempest. 

II. Having seen all these disappointments, he 
plans to go to Rome. 

There were at least nine crashes in his plan of 
travel before he reached the end. 

1. The mob at Ephesus, more dangerous than 
a thousand savage beasts, crying for two hours, 
"Great is Diana," destroyed an orderly journey to 
Macedonia. He was driven out by this insane 
mob. 

2. He was finally hurried out of Greece in a 
roundabout way, northward through Philippi, to 
escape a plot of murder. 

3. Continuing his speech till after midnight at 
Troas, a young man slept under his preaching, 
as hearers do now, mingling the farewell with 
a tragedy. 

4. His good-bye at Miletus, by the mouth of 
the Meander, was a scene of strong men weeping 
their final farewell. Timothy, likely, led off in 
the heart-break. From Rome Paul wrote, "re- 
membering thy tears." 

5. At Csesarea, "What mejan ye to weep and 
break my heart?" "I am willing to be bound." 
Apprehension is very heavy baggage for a traveler. 



44 The Earnest Expectation. 



6. In the sacred temple devoutly accomplishing 
his vow, taken in order to conciliate the Jew, he 
suddenly found himself the center of a wild, mur- 
derous mob, and snatched from their midst by 
the Roman Guard. Surely going to Rome was 
no pleasure journey. 

7. Spirited away by night with a body-guard of 
four hundred and seventy troops, he was carried 
down to Csesarea, where two years was taken out 
of the center of life. Going to Rome was no 
speedy journey. 

8. In a stormy voyage, driven up and down in 
Adria, shipwrecked on the coast of a barbarous 
island, where the winter is spent. 

9. By smoother sailing and over a hun- 
dred miles on foot, a manacled prisoner from an 
outlook on the Appian Way, he at last sees Rome! 
Many a fine carriage passes this manacled traveler, 
grandest hero that ever entered the Imperial City. 

Is this Divine Providence, or is it anarchy, 
abandonment, peril, and perdition ? "All Thy waves 
and Thy billows are gone over me," said the 
psalmist. "Let the day be blotted out when they 
sjaid, A man-child is born," was the sentiment of 
Job. Shall we adopt the sad lines about "Nothing- 
ness?" 



Amid the Triumphs of 4 Wrong. 45 



"Power walketh high, and Misery doth crawl; 
Men wake and sleep, live, strive, regret, 
Forget, and Love and hate and know it. 
This specter saith, 'I wait:' 
At last it beckons and they pass; 
And still the red sands fall within the glass; 
And still the shades around the dial sweep; 
And still the water-clock doth weep, — 
And this is all." 

From this veil of darkness there rises a vision 
beyond all. In the path of the only begotten Son 
of God was the flight into Egypt while yet a babe. 
When a man, a mob drove him from home. Be- 
yond that Gethsemane, desertion, scourging, and 
the final cry, "Lama sabachthani." 

III. Have we not overlooked something in the 
journey to Rome? This is the man who deliber- 
ately asserts, "All things work together for good;" 
"More than conquerors through Christ;" "I am 
persuaded that neither height, nor depth, nor any 
other creature, shall be able to separate us." He 
never recanted. There were wrecks, but He was 
not wrecked ; stormy seas, but He walked the crests 
of the waves; was retarded, but each delay con- 
tributed to the world's welfare. 

We specify some of the triumphs of this journey. 

First among them note some of the addresses 



46 The Earnest Expectation. 

he left to the world — addresses struck out by his 
misfortune. 

1. Where is there anything in literature more 
heart-moving than his farewell Jaddress to the 
Ephesian elders on the seashore at Miletus, at the 
same time one of the most perfect models for pas- 
toral fidelity and effective preaching on record? It 
Came forth amid heart-break. 

2. On the stairs of the Tower of Antonia in 
Jerusalem see him beckon to the crowd with that 
manacled hand. Hark to the rich tones of the 
Hebrew tongue silencing the great throngs eager 
for his life. Rapidly he traces the history of 
God's people, inserting his own religious experi- 
ence, until the hated name of the Nazarene breaks 
off the discourse in the wild shout of the mob; 
but they never could shout down that sermon 
which has lived on and will live through the cen- 
turies. Eight can not be driven back. 

3. This story he substantially repeated before 
King Agrippa, where he put his judges on trial 
before a Higher Tribunal, nor will his defense ever 
be surpassed. 

4. In these addresses he had an experience to tell. 
He told it not for personal exhibition; self was 
lost in the great sweep of truth leading to the 



Amid the: Triumphs of Wrong. 47 

world's salvation. Such preaching hides the 
preacher behind the Savior. No preacher <can 
succeed not supported by personal experience. 

5. He was not monotonous by repetition of the 
same method. In Antioch of Pisidia he swept 
down on his hearers through the history of God's 
dealings with the Israelites, showing their rejec- 
tion of the Messias. At Lystra he approached 
through healing power, ministering to the physidal 
ills of humanity; a method not out of place in 
modern times. It were often better to approach 
a hungry man through a loaf of bread, or a sick 
family with medicine, thus preparing the way for 
the soul's cure. 

In the jail at Philippi, conviction was produced 
by midnight singing and prayer, and it must have 
been richer and better and more heroic: than many 
a modern prayer-meeting, for it was emphasized 
by an earthquake and the salvation of jailer and 
family. 

In Athens he approached a philosophic audi- 
ence through their deities and poetic literature. 

When taken from his refuge in the Tower of 
Antonia before the Sanhedrin, he split the audi- 
ence by springing the question of the resurrection 
of the dead. 

So great a master of the Gospel was he as 



43 The Earnest Expectation. - 

to train his guns according to the field instead 
of shooting on from old embrasures into nowhere. 
All real followers of Paul are "on the firing line." 
Measured by his sermons alone on the journey 
to Rome, the journey was a triumph. 

7. Of one phase of his experience he was reti- 
cent. How much curiosity Biblical critics have 
shown in their determination to find out about thjat 
thorn in the flesh ! Paul had too much self-respect 
to draw attention to his ailments, and we are left 
simply to the lesson of the sufficient grace of 
God, without knowing whether it was sore eyes, 
a crippled hand, or — who cares what? If among 
us a thousand times more attention were given to 
spiritual health we should be more respectable, 
rational, religious, and Pauline. 

Second, had his journey to Rome been smooth 
and brief, we might not be enjoying the great 
Epistles furnished on the way. 

1. How could the world dispense with the Second 
Epistle to the Corinthians, written it seems, while 
at Philippi on the itinerary? Therein the Church 
finds plans of financial success, which, if put in 
practice, would emancipate her from pauperism; 
and yet he gives us a sweep into the "third 
heavens." 

2. From Corinth, during that journey, ema- 



Amid the Triumphs of Wrong. 49 

nated his letter to the Galatians. One sentence 
alone of that Epistle swept away the darkness 
from Martin Luther while climbing Pilate's stairs 
in Rome. 

3. While still abiding at Corinth he wrote the 
greatest Epistle of the Bible, furnishing the key 
to the arch of Old and New Testament Scriptures, 
the Epistle to the Romans. 

4. Incidentally Luke's description of Paul's 
heroic daring during the storm on the sea is 
astonishing for its perfect writing. Read that 
voyage, and wonder at the writer's skill, the man 
described, and his triumphant ;course over all the 
waves of disaster. 

During the two years of confinement in his 
Roman prison were written the Epistles to Phile- 
mon, a very diamond of light ; to the Colossians, 
of wider scope; and to the Ephesians, wider still, 
if not richer in religious tone. There he also 
wrote to his favorite Church at Philippi, his first 
in Europe, which needed no reproof and stood 
alone in ministering to his missionary necessities. 
After these come the letters to Titus and Timothy, 
without which we were robbed of the sunset glow 
of this great light. 
4 



50 The: Earnest Expectation. 



Third, Great as the value of his addresses and 
Epistles to the world, a yet more important fact 
to him, and personally to every one of us, came 
out during this journey made up of wrecks. 

The promise, "Lo, I am with you away/' 
so much doubted and obscured in many Christian 
lives, had remarkable emphasis in this journey to 
Rome. 

1. If we look backward at his previous career, 
there were instances of Christ's personal manifes- 
tation. At Damascus gate He appeared above the 
brightness of the sun, saying, "I am Jesus, whom 
thou persecutest." In Jerusalem afterwards, "I 
saw Him saying, I will send thee far hence to 
the Gentiles." In Corinth Christ appeared to him 
in the night saying, "Fear not; no man shall set 
on thee to hurt thee; I have much people in this 
city." 

2. On this forwjard journey in the Tower of 
Antonia, bruised, imprisoned, "the Lord Jesus 
stood by saying, As thou hast borne witness in 
Jerusalem, so also in Rome." 

On the storm-tossed vessel he declares, "There 
stood by me this night God's angel, declaring, 
Thou shalt stand before Caesar." 



Amid the Triumphs of Wrong. 



5i 



There was one more fulfillment of this prom- 
ised presence, which may be ours as well as his. 

We will not puzzle over the doubtful ques- 
tion as to whether there were two imprisonments. 
It seems clear that there were two trials. The 
first followed by acquittal., whether by release is 
left in doubt. 

Let us attend that first trial. Behold the scene. 
The court-room was likely one of the great basil- 
icas, rectangular in shape, open-roofed, except the 
g-alleries : the judge or prefect, at one end on an 
elevated seat. There were ten assessors to advise 
him, seated on either hand. The crowds of spec- 
tators, fond of cruel sensations, were railed off 
from the court and the prisoner. Paul stood in 
front of the judge, without attorney or witness. 
Who was that judge? If Caesar had time and 
inclination to take the trouble, he could be there. 
If so, his name was Nero, guilty of the murder 
of Octavia, his first wife, for the sake of Poppaea, 
and also guilty of the blood of his mother. Fiddler 
and incendiary of Rome, he laid the burning of 
the city on the Christians : and here was Ja ring- 
leader of them on trial for his life. If not there, 
the prefect was his man. It was a capital crime 



52 The: Earnest Expectation. 



to introduce a new religion. The Nubian lion 
was the executioner. He may have been near 
enough for his hungry whine, his angry growl, 
or the thunder of his roar to have reached the 
court-room. 

Who was the prosecutor? Was it Tertullus, 
who had gone from Jerusalem to accuse him be- 
fore Felix; or was it Alexander the coppersmith, 
whose oration had been shut off by the Ephesian 
mob five years ago? Paul says of him, "He did 
us much harm/' 

Where are Paul's friends? Scan the great 
crowds around the railing in the galleries. It is 
terribly lonesome when a man most needs friends, 
to find them all absent. Not a friendly face in ah 
that throng. Where was Brother Demas? He 
was far away yonder in Thessalonica. Why did 
he go? Paul says, "Having loved this present 
world." He had no appetite for dangers of this 
kind. He has a great following in our time. He 
had been helper when Paul wrote from Rome to 
Colosse, and also to Philemon. His name is found 
among those sending salutations to the brethren. 
The love of this present world is an insidious 
disease. It was the incipient poison in the charac- 
ter of Judas Iscariot. 



Amid the Triumphs of" Wrong. 



53 



Brother Crescens is gone, pehaps on duty, 
to Galatia. It left a gap, however. Titus, on whom 
Paul had greatly leaned in managing benevolent 
jcollections and other ministries in the Church, — 
he was in far-away Dalmatia. Tychicus he had 
sent to Ephesus. Trophimus has been left sick 
at Miletus, where that heartbreaking farewell had 
occurred. "Only Luke is with me," he says. Pos- 
sibly the beloved physician is needed to treat that 
thorn in the flesh, and to write up the wonderful 
story of the Acts of the Apostles. 

"All forsook me and fled." Hail, Brother 
Paul ! Every true minister and servant of God 
has felt that overwhelming sense of loneliness. 

But hark ! the prisoner speaks ! Possibly he 
explains the religion of which he was accused. 
Alone, did I say? There was One who "stood 
by." The same as manifested Himself yonder in 
Corinth, and again in the Tower, — He is here in 
the court-room. Had their eyes been open to 
behold Him, they had fled in terror surpassing 
that of Belshazzar's feast. "Stood by, and 
strengthened me, that through me the message 
might be fully proclaimed, and that all the Gen- 
tiles might hear." Here is the secret of power 
in or out of the pulpit, which makes preaching 



54 Ths Earnest Expectation 



effective; or without it but mockery. The lion 
missed his meal : "I was delivered out of the mouth 
of the lion.'' The scene resembles that of the fabled 
Phoenix, singing amid the fires kindled by her own 
wings, and rising in immoratality amid its flames. 
Preaching the Gospel there alone, confronted by 
Nero's court "delivered." 

It was not far thence to the final event which 
himself describes : "I have fought the good fight, 
I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; 
henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of 
righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, 
shall give me jat that day." That great head fell 
by the stroke of the sword, to be exchanged for a 
crown of righteousness. 

"All things work together for good to them 
that love God." 



IV. 



IN SPITE OF OPPOSERS. 

"Our Gospel came not unto you in word only, 
but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and 
in much assurance [fullness]." — i Thess. i, 5. 

I. Preliminary. 

1. Two preachers came to Thessalonica with 
the Gospel, — Paul and Silas. Even the apostles 
needed companionship. Christ sent out the sev- 
enty, two and two. For a long time, Asbury 
and his successors appointed a preacher in charge 
and a junior preacher. In our time we need as- 
sistant pastors and deaconesses. "One shall chase 
a thousand, but two put ten thousand to flight.'' 

Fortunately, we have no photographs of Paul 
and his comrade thrust upon our attention. If 
so, we might be annoyed by some hint of self- 
consciousness. I am grateful to Paul for keeping 
silent about his ailment, further than to give its 
lesson of faith. 

2 Where was it this Gospel came with power 
55 



56 Th£ Earnest Expectation. 



and the Holy Spirit? If we go to the northwest 
corner of the iEgean Sea we shall find Salonica. 
The name of the city has been shorn of its first 
syllable by the Turk, characterized by Gladstone 
as the "Unspeakable Turk." It is next in popula- 
tion to Constantinople, a city of seventy-five thou- 
sand; a mixture of splendor and squalor, where 
are many ancient ruins, Cyclopean and Hellenic 
walls, and triumphal arches. Thither in our day, 
Came Miss Stone from her long captivity under 
the banditti. There Paul and his companion found 
a synagogue. It was ever his habit to seek out 
the regular place of worship, as it was also of the 
Master; though they knew the worshipers had 
become dead formalists. 

They also went to the fields and lanes to 
preach to the people. Necessity is upon us in 
our djay to do the same ; but that furnishes no war- 
rant for discounting the house of God as the center 
of all religious activity and the harbor into which 
converts must be drawn. 

II. We have in this text an epitome of "our 
Gospel." 

I. It is "ours" in a vital sense, just as the 
Charter of Rights wrested from King John in 
the thirteenth century is the inheritance of every 



In Spits of" Opposers. 



57 



British subject. As the Constitution of the United 
States is the possession of every American citi- 
zen, so, more pre-eminently and imperishably, is 
the Gospel preached at Thessalonica our Gospel. 

2. In Paul's statement of the manner of its 
coming we see its living essentials. Like the 
transverse section of a gem, this statement reveals 
the grain. Cut a tree crosswise, and you reveal 
the manner of its growth and life. A transverse 
section of an apple-tree reveals its general plan 
from the root through the trunk, to the twig, into 
the very core of the apple itself. 

III. This text shows that our Gospel comes in 
word, in power, in the Holy Spirit, and in assurance. 

I. It came in choice, external form. No liter- 
ature is like that of the English Bible, surpassing 
even Shakespeare in shaping the language of the 
English-speaking world. This applies also to its 
Hebrew and its Greek originals. 

Paul's use of the "Word" was more funda- 
mental. It was equivalent to "doctrine." In this 
sense the Gospel came to Thessalonica as a pre- 
sentation of the burden of the Old Testament 
Scriptures and their application and fulfillment in 
the person and mission of Christ. "For three 
Sabbath days he reasoned with them out of the 



58 The Earnest Expectation. 

Scriptures, opening and alleging- thjat Christ must 
needs have suffered and risen again from the dead." 
A fine model to the modern pulpit of masterly 
exposition and doctrinal preaching. We shall 
never get on without more continuous and vigor- 
ous use of the sword of the Spirit. The word 
which Paul found so effective is contained in the 
Bible from Genesis through the Apocalypse. It is 
as fundamental to our Gospel as are the ribs of the 
earth to its surface. We can depend upon it 
to abide while God's throne stands secure. "We 
have not followed cunningly devised fables." 

2. "Not in word only, but in power" (dunamis). 
For the English word "power" there are at least 
a dozen senses. It may mean ability, authority, 
might; but Paul here uses the word which fur- 
nishes the root for dynamite. Possibly there was 
in his mind, as an illustration, that terrible force 
which, some years ago, tore away the barrier of 
New York harbor, known as Hell Gate ; that which 
broke a tunnel through the Alps, and is soon to 
blast out another through the Sierra Nevadas; the 
same in principle as that which recently broke 
from Pelee, and on across continents and seas 
to Hawaii and the islands of the Indian Ocean; 



In Spits op Opposers. 



59 



the kind of power that shakes the earth from buried 
Caracas to Batottm in Russia. 

It was but natural that this outward expression 
of power should be fresh in his mind. In Philippi, 
the last city where he had preached, for casting 
out a demon and so cutting off the graft of those 
who had great gain from the poor, possessed girl, 
he and Silas were scourged; in prison and at 
midnight, lying on their sore backs, with their feet 
in the stocks, they sang. A modern hymn would 
have fitted the case, — 

"And prisons would palaces prove, 
If Jesus should dwell with me there." 

They were the happiest men in Philippi: "And 
the prisoners heard ;" so did the Lord of the earth- 
quake. The walls rock, the bolts fly back, and 
the prisoners might have escaped. The jailer, that 
night, made his escape from a stronger prison than 
such as inclosed the cells. When we behold the 
stripes of those prisoners washed, the jailer and 
his household rejoicing in spiritual freedom, dis- 
pensing hospitality to God's ambassadors, we need 
not deplore sudden conversion nor despair of that 
power which brings "deliverance to the captives." 



6o The Earnest Expectation. 



It is this power which surpasses in moral great- 
ness, that form which wheels the earth in its 
orbit and holds the sun, moon, and stars in their 
courses. 

The power of habit is recognized in every 
sphere of human action. A bad habit may enchain 
a man hopelessly, a good habit may be as lasting 
as life and character; but the power of the Gospel 
can demolish habits as an explosion can wipe out 
a city block. 

The human will is the mightiest part of a man. 
God himself will not destroy or compel that will 
within the sphere of personal choice. It can stand 
up before Sinai and Calvary, before death and 
eternity, in stolid defiance; or it can, by self-as- 
sertion, ally itself with the will of the Almighty. 
Here is the challenge of our Gospel in its ministry 
and its laity. We stand perplexed and amazed 
before the problems here encountered. But ever 
since at Thessalonica they "consorted with Paul 
and Silas, and of the devout Greeks a great multi- 
tude, and of the chief women not a few, and 
turned the world upside down," has tliis power 
operated on human nature, until this day its con- 
quests are as marked and more extensive, perva- 
sive, and all-conquering than at any time in the 



In Spite of Opposers. 



61 



history of mjan. Lord give me, and the reader, 
and the Church this power. 

3. "And in the Holy Spirit." Necessarily so. 
We must discriminate between the power and its 
Author, between the impersonal, effectual influ- 
ence and the personal Holy Spirit. We may speak 
of the power as "it," but of the Spirit as "He."* 
It is impertinent in us to attempt to comprehend 
or expound the Trinity; but it is no more myste- 
rious than the simplest flower or grain of sand. 
It is very assuring to know that the "Comforter 
is come;" "the Holy Ghost from heaven, the 
Feather's promise given." In the sense of the Di- 
vine promise, He came upon the Pentecostal Church 
with the assurance, "He shall abide with you for- 
ever." He never withdrew from men. "He convicts 
of sin, righteousness, # and judgment." "He bears wit- 
ness with our spirit." "Through Him we cry, Abba, 
Father." Like a great three-cornered stjar, Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost are three in one. He is the 
angle now immediately in touch with the world 
of mankind. This is His dispensation. Our Gos- 
pel, if it come at all in power, must come in the 
Holy Spirit. If I open my lungs, the air rushes in ; 
if I open my eyes, the light floods my being: so 

*Some say the Holy Spirit is the mother nature of God. 



62 The Earnest Expectation. 



open we our souls to the Spirit of God, more ready 
than air or light to fill us to the uttermost. Hal- 
lelujah ! 

4. Need we finish this sermon outlined? 
Whether, we take the word "assurance," or the 
other "fullness,'' both are inevitable. 

It is very comforting to be assured or insured 
in property, home, or family; but when the inter- 
ests involved cover life and death, time and 
eternity, sin and righteousness, man and God, to 
be "assured" is heaven begun below. Poor indeed 
is that man who hath not found it. The Gospel 
means good tidings. To accept it is to have the 
"New Jerusalem descend out of heaven from God," 
and "our Father making His tabernacle with men." 

We must not rob ourselves of the glorious pros- 
pect of a great hereafter toward which, it may 
be, our Christian fathers aspired too exclusively. 
"There remaineth therefore a rest to the people 
of God," and "if in this life only we have hope, 
we are of all men the most pitiable." "To depart 
and be with Christ is far beter," but our Gospel 
brings heaven on ejarth and "good will toward 
men." 

" 'T is a heaven below. 
My Redeemer to know." 



In Spits: op Opposers 



65 



The dying seer reports the truth as he declares : 
''The waters deepened; unawares, a presence and 
a voice ! That presence moved beside me like a 
cloud of glory. That Voice was like a silver 
trumpet, saying, 'It is I. Fear not.' And whether 
now the waters were less deep, or I was borne 
on invisible arms, I know not. My mortal robes 
only brushed the smoothly gliding stream : 

" 'And like the edges of a sunset cloud, 
The beatific land before me lay'." 

"The earnest expectation'' hath a present, a con- 
tinuous, and a complete fulfillment. 



V. 



BY WAY OF THE JUNIPER-TREE. 

"Elias was a man subject to like passions as we 
we." — James v, 17. 

"He came and sat down under a juniper-tree ; and 
he requested for himself that he might die; and 
said, It is enough; now, Lord, take away 
my life; for I am not better than my fathers." — 
1 Kings xix, 4. 

I. It is said that a man is as strong as his 
weakest point. Doubted. 

Here is the most conspicuous of all the prophets. 
We find him at the point of despair. He was so 
great as to furnish the pattern for Christ's immediate 
herald, John the Baptist. He stood on Mount 
Hermon as peer of Moses, the lawgiver. He 
was the man of storm, earthquake, and fire. If 
ever frail, it is here under the juniper. 

But he was as strong as all his noblest quali- 
ties together. Man is not like a chain, only strong 
as its weakest link. In him all the links interact 

64 



By Way of the: Juniper-Trex 65 

and transfuse their strength even into the weak- 
est one. Herein a man and a chain are different. 
"When I am weak, then am I strong," implies, 
"Where I am weak, there am I strong." Devil's 
Gate and Golden Gate are the danger-points for 
hostile fleets, being easy of entry. But defended 
by military art and naval prowess, they are as 
strong as the nation back of their equipment. 

There is nothing in this swing of Elijah down 
to our lower level of human weakness to excuse 
failure; much less to gloat over or palliate our 
sins and peccadilloes. "They are all alike, they 
all do it," is a cowardly, villainous excuse, the 
betaking of a mean spirit to a hiding-place, after 
the manner of a prairie-dog to its den with rattle- 
snake society. 

To those who have hard fighting — and there 
is plenty for jail — it is consoling, stimulating, and 
inspiring to find men of the rank of Elijah under 
the juniper. 

There is in life's desert a widely scattered grove 
of juniper-trees. Daniel Curry, editor and scholar, 
had the appearance of a lion-hearted, aggressive 
warrior. But if one went deep enough he would 
find a tender, humble, lovable spirit. On one oc- 
casion he went down &mid ecclesiastical strife. 
5 



66 



The Earnest Expectation. 



This was years before his death; but he was 
minded to retire, and expressed himself in a man- 
ner to show that he had found his juniper-tree. 
Professor Lacroix, who was a clear thinker and 
trenchant writer, passed prematurely away. Once 
he asked the writer, "Did you ever feel as if 
you would like to end your own life ?" "No, I 
never had any fondness for a rope's end." "Then 
you do not know the meaning of life's trials." 
Have we not frequent side glimpses of our friends 
in humble sphere, when toil, pain, grief, obscurity, 
apparently endless and hopeless, has brought out 
the cry that burst from the lips of Elijah? This 
experience does not spare men of higher rjank. 
Job cried, "O that Thou wouldst hide me in the 
grave !" Moses said, "Kill me out of hand, and 
let me not see my misery." Jonah prayed, "O Lord, 
take, I beseech Thee, my life from me." Paul had 
"a desire to depart." Jesus said, "Now is my soul 
troubled, what shall I say?'' 

II. It may clear the way to note some ques- 
tions thjat will unbidden assert themselves in the 
presence of Elijah, the Tishbite. 

i. Is this chapter a myth, and the events men- 
tioned only a parable in dramatic form? 

If so, James is misleading. "Elias was a man 



By Way of th$ Juniper-Tres. 67 

of like passions. He pijayed that it might not rain, 
and it rained not. He prayed again, and the earth 
brought forth her fruit." 

Paul speaks of him as though writing biography 
when he inquires, "Wot ye not what the Scripture 
saith of Elias, how he maketh intercession to God 
against Israel?" 

Jesus declared, "Many widows were in Israel 
in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut 
up three years and six months; unto none of them 
was Elias sent save unto Sarepta, unto a woman 
that was a widow." All these allusions are in the 
form of biography. 

But were these references, and the entire history, 
only intended to dramatize the moral involved, 
their practical value would remain. The living 
truth would demand our allegiance. We there- 
fore propose no dispute, but that obedience which, 
earnest and honest, will lead to the same end. 

The wonder is that the startling events of the 
narrative produced so little astonishment and won- 
der in the minds of writers and eye-witnesses of 
the events. 

2. Another incidental feature of this story was 
well stated by a banker after hearing this sermon. 
"Was not Elijah a sort of a wild man, a hermit 



68 The Earnest Expectation. 



after the order of the modern Arab, and so re- 
moved from the experiences and rules governing 
our times?" 

His outer surroundings were exceptional; his 
appearance and life habits singular, even in that 
day. But human nature and its experiences are 
Continuous, like wind, water, heat, and cold. So 
sin and sorrow, love and hate, make us all akin. 
In this there is "nothing new under the sun." "He 
was a man subject to like passions as we are." 

III. The following is the outline of our plan 
of discussion: I. Where do we find the prophet? 
2. How came he there? 3. How did he get on 
from that place? 

1. In the wilderness south of Judea, toward 
Egypt, is an arid country covered with sand and 
gravel. The beds of its shallow streams are dry 
for most of the year. It is sprinkled with very 
scant vegetation. Possibly in some future day it 
may blossom and bear fruit, but not while under 
the dominion of Arab or Turk. 

The juniper-tree is unlike our northern strong- 
trunked, green-headed shade-tree. This Rothem 
or broom-tree grows in several branches from a 
common root, seldom much over a dozen feet in 
height. Its leaves are narrow and in the spring- 



By Way op the: Junipkr-Trpx 69 

time it puts forth a delicate flower of a pale eolor, 
streaked with purple, charged with sweet fragrance. 
If then in bloom, the prophet was not likely in 
any mood to enjoy the fragrance. The shade is 
the best afforded by the desert. He had gone a 
day's journey into it, and had possibly traveled for 
a couple of nights as a fugitive from the vengeance 
of Jezebel. It was likely the heat of the day 
when he sat down under the poor shadow. 

Look at the man. He is wearied, afoot and 
alone. To the men of Ahab and his kind are the 
chariots and horseback. Elijah's equipment is his 
sheepskin mantle, good for cover or pillow, a 
girdle for his loose tunic, a turban, and sandals. 
He is a "hairy man." Prophets wore their hair 
and beard uncut; not filthy or untidy, for all the 
ordinances of the worship of his forefathers and 
of men in sacred offices required scrupulous and 
immaculate cleanliness. 

He was doubtless lithe of form. Two days 
ago he had girded up his loins and run sixteen 
miles before Ahab's chariot from Carmel to Jez- 
reel. 

What of his countenance? This is usually 
carved by the inner spirit and habits of life. His 
parents may have named him Elijah, meaning 



70 The Earnest Expectation. 



Jehovah is my God. Or he may have won the 
name by his life habit of facing Jehovah. This 
would stamp his features with moral grandeur. 

Now there is a cloud on that face. His lips 
move in prayer. Hark! "It is enough, now, O 
Lord, take away my life." One feels like with- 
drawing from the privacy of this agonized soul. 
This man prayed less than four years ago, and 
the heavens ceased to send their rain. Then three 
days ago he prayed seven times, and there came 
the little cloud, the gathering storm, the rush and 
roar of the deluge of rain. He prays again now. 
Shall we behold the death-shadows gather over 
his face and stamp these features in the calmness 
of death, while the spirit is escorted home to its 
eternal rest? Nothing of the sort. God is our 
Father, and is too good. He can say no at the 
right time ! This is no place to quit, no time to 
muster out; there is work ahead and the best of 
life yet to live, with Horeb and a chariot of fire 
on beyond. God be praised. 

2. What brought him there? Were we to 
count all the steps from the time he arraigned the 
two great sins of Israel, calf worship and Baal 
worship, then on through his flight to the cave 



By Way of the Juniper-Tree. 71 

by the brook Cherith, the escape to Zarephath, 
the meeting with Ahab, the challenge to a con- 
test on Mt. Carmel, the revival and the reform, 
followed by reaction, then the retreat to the wil- 
derness, we should find there were twenty steps 
downward to this last one into despondency, despair 
of the cause, and longing to die. 

It was a long slide in three days from the 
glory of a flamelit mountain-top and the shout- 
ing hosts of people, down to despondency under 
the juniper in the desert. 

A few of the causes of discouragement it may 
be profitable to mention. 

(1.) All the punishment inflicted upon the sin- 
ful nation, in the form of drought, hunger, and 
pestilence, seemed to have failed in bettering their 
condition, and he himself had been the instrument 
in the hands of God in bringing these scourges 
down upon the people, who only grew worse under 
their afflictions. 

(2.) Akin to this had been the dreadful scene 
at the river Kishon, whose waters ran red with 
the blood of at least four hundred false prophets. 
Was he justified in ordering their slaughter? Not 
of his own choice. He was but the executive of 



72 The Earnest Expectation. 

Divine law, which required the death penalty for 
such sinners. This, however, had seemed a use- 
less slaughter. 

(3.) Before the slaughter of the prophets of Baal 
there had been a destruction of the prophets of 
Jehovah. Even the one hundred hid by faithful 
Obadiah in a cave had dropped out of sight. Elijah 
seemed to be alone. Where are his friends now, 
"when a friend in need is a friend indeed?" All 
servants of God find occasions when they seem to be 
abandoned. They wonder where their friends are 
hid, and why they do not speak out in time of 
trial. Elijah had left his servant behind. There 
was no raven to disturb the silence, not even a 
dog to look his pity. 

(4.) "The spirit of a man will sustain his 
infirmity, but a broken spirit, who can bear?" 

He was tired, hungry, suffering reaction from 
great excitement and sleepless nights. These were 
the lesser causes for discouragement. The re- 
vival was passed as suddenly as it came. The 
reform had miscarried. The election was a de- 
feat. A fickle Church and nation from shouting, 
"The Lord, He is God!" had been overcome by 
the resolute will of a wicked queen and a weak 
king. Elijah had to flee from the great rain, the 



By Way of the Juniper-Tres. 73 

gates of Jezreel, to the desert, the scrawny juni- 
per, and wanted to give up and die. 

Look out when the election goes wrong; when 
trusted officers betray, the public conscience be- 
comes chilled. There is danger in the situation. 
The great William Morley Punshon, nearing death, 
said, "All thy waves and thy billows are gone 
over me." But he could add, "Since they are Thy 
waves and Thy billows, blessed be Thy name/' 
Rumor has it — we hope it is only gossip — that 
Czar Nicholas, under his measureless responsi- 
bility, has contemplated suicide. We are never 
beyond His depths, Who cried, "Why hast Thou* 
forsaken Me?" 

3. How did he escape? We are too familiar 
with the way to the juniper. We should be more 
familiar with the paths of escape. "God is faith- 
ful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above 
that ye are able; but will, with the temptation, 
also make a way to escape." 

(1.) He slept. The great English poet says: 

"Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep." 

The great Hebrew psalmist surpasses that in 
his declaration, "So He giveth His beloved 



74 Th£ Earnest Expectation. 



sleep;" like unto the loving mother's lullaby, "Lie 
still, and slumber." The nightly curtain is 
drawn between the light of day and the world's 
bed-chamber. Not for the purpose of revel- 
ing and crime, but for rest, recuperation, and repose 
in God. That pillowed head in the hinder part 
of the ship, after an exhausting day, brings the 
Lord of the seas very close to His brotherhood 
of tired humanity. This was Elijah's first pre- 
paratory step of escape. 

(2.) He needed food and was furnished. There 
was no raven in the sky, no exhausting meal- 
barrel near at hand, nor was there any manna 
falling from heaven, as had been granted to Is- 
rael in that wilderness long ago. Yet "give us 
this day our daily bread" has always been the 
Divine order. There were myriads of angels at 
call, or the no less wonderful laws of nature to 
be harnessed up. He awoke when the angel 
touched him, inviting him to arise and eat. "He 
looked, and, behold, a cake baken on the coals 
and a cruse of water at his head, and he did eat 
and drink, and laid him down again." He may 
or may not have slept again; but "the angel of 
the Lord came the second time, and touched him, 
and said, Arise and eat, because the journey is 



By Way of the: Juniper-Tre£. 75 

too great for thee." Thus he was amply fed for 
his journey, and, whether it was in the food or 
in the man, God has a thousand ways to provide 
that it last. "And he arose, and did eat and drink, 
and went in the strength of that meat forty days 
and forty nights unto Horeb, the mount of God." 
Thus it happened to Moses when necessary, and 
to the Son of man when called to stand for 
his brethren in their temptation through the flesh 
by Satan. 

We may vainly imagine that it was a peculiar 
favor to feed on manna in the wilderness, or share 
in the five loaves and two small fishes on the shores 
of Galilee. Our daily bread comes in a more 
wonderful manner, and brings to us a thousand- 
fold more daily evidences of the goodness of God. 
We sow the grain; the sun and the clouds join 
with yet more mysterious laws, and these in turn 
are helped by human skill to bring to us our food. 
This is surrounded by flesh and fruit, and all the 
outfit of our richly furnished tables from all lands. 
Were I to chose between the manna and the grain, 
I should prefer the latter as more marvelous and 
eloquent as a reminder of the goodness of God. 
Where shall this Divine revelation to us have an 
end? We have blundered on until electricity has 



76 Ths Earnest Expectation. 



become our servant, furnishing us with light and 
fuel and power. We are beginning to burn the 
atmosphere as fuel, and ride upon the wings of 
the wind. How dare we be irreverent, unthank- 
ful, and unbelieving amid ten thousand voices from 
all directions? 

(3.) The way from under the juniper-tree led 
to Mt. Horeb, a memorable sanctuary associated 
with the covenant, the giving of the law, the erec- 
tion of the tabernacle, and a well-ordered form of 
worship. Thither Elijah must betake himself for 
communion with God under solitary and sublime 
conditions. Poor, indeed, is that life which is not 
marked by sacred places, where the pilgrim has 
met with God alone. We must have some Jab- 
bok's ford, or Mt. Horeb, or Joppa housetop, or 
Hermon's heights, or quiet beneath the night sky. 
From such hallowed places men can go down 
again to grapple with devil-possessed plains. 

(4.) Nor could he be recovered and equipped 
for what was yet before him until he "entered 
into his closet and prayed to God in secret." His 
closet was Horeb's cave. That of Job Ledbetter, 
in Portsmouth, Ohio, was the garret under the 
roof of the flouring-mill. That of my father was 
beneath an apple-tree shadowed by the twilight. 



By Way of the Juniper-Tree. 77 

Where is yours, and where mine? — for we must 
have them or fail. 

(5.) God spake to Elijah thrice: 

First. "What doest thou here, Elijah?" He 
must unburden his heart. He never had been per- 
mitted to tell his troubles to a wife, for he had 
none. Why do not men constantly share their men- 
tal burdens with their wives? They are generally 
more trustworthy and wiser than they have credit 
for. There was no brother at hand to whom he 
might tell his experience. The class-meeting is 
well founded and furnishes great opportunity to 
bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law 
of Christ. But God's ear is ever open to our cry. 

Listen to the testimony of Elijah: "I have been 
very jealous for the Lord God of hosts." That 
is true. "For the children of Israel have forsaken 
Thy covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and 
slain Thy prophets with the sword." That is 
true, Elijah. "And I, I only, am left, and they 
seek my life to take it away." The latter part 
of that is true, Elijah, but the first is not. 
Do not imagine that you are the only good man 
alive. That is a very common mistake made both 
by sincere and by hypocritical people. It is a 
bad symptom when a man imagines that the king- 



78 The Earnest Expectation. 

dom of heaven has been narrowed down to one 
man's soul, or even to the limits of his religious 
denomination. 

After the Lord had spoken through the triple 
display of wind, earthquake, and fire, He repeats 
the same question, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" 
He then disabuses Elijah's mind, showing him that 
there are more than seven thousand which have 
not bowed unto Baal. 

Second. A second time the Lord speaks: "Go 
forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord." 
"A great and strong wind rent the mountains, and 
brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord." Here 
is something to be desired on the part of Elijah, 
a power whereby to sweep through the forests 
of evil men with destruction. Elijah, thou art my 
brother. Do not I often long for tempests of 
Divine wrath to sweep out the evils of society with 
all their promoters, and make an end of it sud- 
denly? But "the Lord was not in the wind." 
There came a cyclone across the city of Louisville, 
Ky., destroying the dwellings, in whole or in part, 
of ten thousand people. One after another of 
those who had escaped declared, "I promised God 
last night if He permitted me to live, I should 
serve Him to the best of my ability the remainder 



By Way of th£ Juniper-Tree. 79 

of life." I did not know one of them to keep 
that promise. God was not in the wind. Men are 
not spiritually healed in that way. "Through na- 
ture up to nature's God" fails. "Ye must be 
born of the Spirit." 

The Lord exhibits another sample of power: 
"After the wind, an earthquake." What is more 
heart-sickening than to see church-spires and chim- 
ney-tops twisting off, and feel the shiver in the 
earth as though about to go to pieces under one, 
and the foundations giving way? Yet "the Lord 
was not in the earthquake." We should enjoy 
with Elijah the power to shake men out of their 
wickedness by tumbling down their walls, behind 
which their crimes against God and men are per- 
petrated. We should like to hear them cry out 
for pity. But if saints were created in that way, 
surely the West Indies, South America, Italy, and 
the Sandwich Islands would blossom and bloom 
with the fairest harvest of Christianity on the face 
of the earth, for they are most frequently alarmed 
by earthquake. 

The Lord displays a third symbol of His power : 
"After the earthquake, a fire." Ah! Elijah, here 
is thy favorite element of power. The fire came 
down on Mt. Carmel and burnt up thy sacrifice, 



8o Th£ Earnest Expectation. 



and after this, at thy beck and call, thine 
enemies were consumed by fire, and for thine 
ascent came horses of fire and a chariot of 
fire. Here, now, as in the time of Moses, 
Horeb is once more wrapped in a "garment 
of fire." Dost thou expect healing of spirit 
for thyself or the salvation of sinners through the 
vengeance of fire, with which "the earth and the 
works that are therein shall be burned up?" "The 
Lord was not in the fire." One could wish that 
lightning might fall from heaven, or fire spring up 
amid the poisonous gases of the dens of iniquity, 
and burn out every saloon and gambling-hell now 
destroying mankind. But this is not God's way 
of salvation. 

Once more the Lord speaks: "After the fire, 
a still, small voice." "And it was so when Elijah 
heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, 
and went out, and stood in the entering in of the 
cave." "And, behold, a voice, What doest thou 
here, Elijah ?" He repeats the story of his troubles 
as before, but finds wherein he is mistaken. There 
are many good people in Israel, and his main life 
work lies yet before him. It is a striking spectacle 
when he wraps his face in his mantle, and stands 
in the entering in of the cave. 



By Way of th£ Juniper-Tree. 8i 

"Sweeter far the still, small voice, 
Unheard by human ear, 
That makes the broken heart rejoice, 
And dries the bitter tear." 

"The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our 
spirits that we are the children of God." 

There is no successful reformation without re- 
vivals, and there can be no revival independently 
of the still, small voice, convicting of sin, righteous- 
ness, and judgment. This made the Pente- 
costal revival and all its true successors possible 
under Wesley or Moody, in Wales or India. 

IV. From this climax in his triumph over dis- 
couragement, take a glance forward before he fades 
out of sight. 

I. The first great fact, he must return to duty. 
"The Lord said, Go, return on thy way to the 
wilderness of Damascus." That word "Go" is 
forever the Lord's command to His Church. 

There were some reforms to be accomplished. 
Hazael was to be made king over Syria, and Jehu 
king over Israel. Nor has the Lord yet discharged 
the successors of the prophets, Christian ministers, 
from the duty of overturning bad civil rulers, and 
securing in their place men faithful to the laws 
and the well-being of society. 
6 



82 The Earnest Expectation. 



A gratifying commission was the anointing of 
a successor in the person of Elisha. Let Elijah 
not be uneasy lest the cause die with him. It 
is God's way that the prophets should have a 
succession till the end of time. And those suc- 
cessors, as in Elijah's case, will surpass the fathers 
in influence, and possibly in tactful wisdom. This 
rugged head of the prophetic school was to found 
schools of the prophets. The successors of those 
schools yonder at Boston, Drew, and Garrett, not 
to speak of others throughout the land, are no 
less valuable in our day than were those at Gilgal 
and Bethel. "Faith of our fathers, living still." 

The best period of Elijah's life lies before him, 
between Mt. Horeb and the plains of Jordan, with 
its fiery chariot. To fix the age-limit by the calen- 
dar draws the line where God Himself does not. 

2. Let us go forward a little further to the 
day of his departure. His work is done; Elisha 
will not be turned back; they cross the Jordan, 
the students from the school of the prophets watch- 
ing them as they go. A startling apparition : Whose 
steeds are these? What chariot, and whence? 
Such was never driven by Ahab or King Solomon. 
And this whirlwind of fire! Elijah goes up; he 
does not die. His mantle falls back for Elisha, 



By Way of ths Junip£r-Trk£. 83 

whereby to separate Jordan's symbol of official 
power. O, Elijah, what if God had granted thy re- 
quest under yon juniper-tree ! Then where had been 
thy life's best chapter? Where the schools of the 
prophets, and their successors, to carry out the 
Divine commission for the change of kings in 
Syria and Israel? 

God knows best where life should end, and 
how. This thou hast known these three thousand 
years in glory. 

3. We must have one more glimpse of thee on 
earth. Nine hundred years later there is a night- 
scene on another mountain-top, Hermon's lonely 
heights. There are three men dazed by an awful 
light, shining through the cloud of glory upon the 
Son of man, who had gone there to pray, and as 
He prayed His countenance shone above the bright- 
ness of the sun, and His garments were white as 
light. Thither came the giver of the law in the 
person of Moses, who had been fourteen hundred 
years with God. And here art thou, Elijah. How 
glad we are to know that, though Moses was 
buried by angels, and thou, Elijah, carried up 
in a whirlwind of fire, still the dead are alive for 
evermore. But behold the three talking together, 
Moses and Elias, with Jesus. What is the theme? 



84 The Earnest Expectation. 

Is it Egypt, Pharaoh, the Red Sea, the burning 
bush, the thunder of Sinai, the burial from Nebo's 
lonely height? Not that. With thee, Elijah. Is 
it the ravens and the brook Cherith, or Sarepta, 
or Carmel's fire, or the sad juniper-tree, or Mount 
Horeb with its triple coat of wind, earthquake, 
and fire? Is it the separation of the Jordan? 
Is it chariot or whirlwind of fire? None of 
these. What can it be that should interest 
such a conference representing law and prophecy? 
We are glad we know that it was something 
greater, to which all these pointed, "The Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sins of the 
world;" for they speak "concerning the de- 
Cease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem." 
The council broke, the disciples went down with 
Jesus to the foot of the mountain to find their work 
in devil-possessed humanity, beginning with the 
boy. But thou hast taught us, by the sorrows of 
the juniper-tree, to "wait for the earnest expec- 
tation." 



VI. 

THROUGH THE GREAT ECLIPSE! 

"From the sixth hour there was darkness over all 
the land unto the ninth hour" — Matt, xxvii, 45. 

"He said, It is finished, and He bowed His head, 
and gave up the ghost." — John xix, 30. 

I. This morning, August 30, 1905, a belt of 
the earth, nearly one hundred and seventy miles 
wide, and one thousand miles long, saw an eclipse 
of the sun, continuing from five o'clock to 8.30. 

On the American Continent, this belt of total- 
ity lay between Hudson Bay and Newfoundland. 
The entire belt was 4,000 miles wide, and from 
my home near the 40th parallel I saw the lower 
left rim apparently bitten out of the sun by what, 
in China, would have been a dragon. The fowls 
were unusually silent, and the crickets were less 
noisy. But at 8.30 the last black fringe passed 
from the face of the sun. 

II. It was a suggestive event for at the same 
time, yonder at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the 

85 



86 The Earnest Expectation. 



eclipse of war was being caused to pass off the 
face of Asia, and the brightness which broke over 
Bethlehem's heights long ago in the angel song, 
"Peace on earth to men of good will," burst over 
the world, and Bethlehem's Star settled on Man- 
churia. 

III. Three shocks of an earthquake shook the 
walls of the building in which the treaty was made 
yesterday. 

IV. Nineteen hundred and seventy-two years 
ago the greatest eclipse between the loss of Eden 
and the Judgment-day happened at Mount Calvary, 
when, for three hours, darkness was upon the face 
of the earth, and Jesus cried, "It is finished." 

How extensive the shadow is uncertain; but 
it was wide enough to make the needed impres- 
sion. It was not an eclipse in the order of as- 
tronomy. The moon was full, and therefore out 
of the earth's orbit, so that the sun could shine 
directly in the moon's face. An ordinary eclipse 
was impossible. 

An earthquake soon followed the death of Jesus. 
A hazy darkness often precedes and accompanies 
an earthquake. This fact detracts nothing from, 
but rather adds to, the impressiveness of the dark- 
ness which settled upon the greatest crime in human 



Through the Great Ecupse. 87 

history. Even the Roman soldier cried out from 
his standpoint, ''Truly this was a son of God." 

V. There was another eclipse on the cross, 
which settled upon the face of Jesus. That strange 
shadow, Death, fell upon His features, as it surely 
will upon every human countenance, and has 
fallen since the time it settled upon the face of 
Abel through the unnumbered myriads of man- 
kind, and will until "there shall be no more death." 

The eclipse of death remained upon the face 
of Jesus till the morning of the third day, when 
it passed away forever. 

He is the Son of man, our Elder Brother, who 
"tasted death for every man," and forever fixed 
it that the eclipse of death will also pass from 
every human face in the resurrection of the dead, 
both of the just and of the unjust. Alas! that it 
should be in vain for any who will not obey the 
Light, but "hold down the truth in unrighteous- 
ness, and change the truth of God into a lie." 
Those who are changed into the likeness of His 
image "shall be like Him, and see Him as he is." 

As the shadow passes to-day from the sun; 
as the darkness passed from Calvary ; so the shadow 
of Death shall pass from the redeemed world. 

The great central event in human history was 



88 The Earnest Expectation. 



announced when Jesus cried, "It is finished:" 
Matthew says, He "cried with a loud voice;" John 
reports the words He spake. It was not a dying 
wail, but the shout of victory. 

Though an eclipse, it is the focal moral light 
of history, human and Divine, in this world. 

1. The physical agony of Jesus was finished. 
In this He comes very near to our human nature. 
My dear friend was nigh unto death in California, 
but, when recalled to life, declared his greatest 
regret was the agony of recovery. It frequently 
occurs that the departing saint will say, "Why did 
you bring me back to life and its agony again?" 
With Jesus, the torture of the crudest type in- 
vented by savage ingenuity, the cross — the nails 
driven into nerve and bone, the horrible thirst, 
with the six dreadful hours — was over when He 
said, "It is finished." He led the way to where 
there shall be "no more pain." 

2. The spiritual agony was immeasurably greater 
than the physical. A brutal man would have en- 
dured the torture of crucifixion with calmness, or 
even defiance, impossible to the physical delicacy 
belonging to a fine organization. The two thieves 
outlived Him. 

Jesus suffered by anticipation: "I have a bap- 



Through the: Great Eclipse;. 89 

tism to be baptized with, but how am I straitened 
till it be accomplished?" He endured the cruci- 
fixion a long time before it came. 

The agony of Gethsemane is incomprehensible. 
The wife of a coarse, cruel husband, whose sons 
were disgracing her, and whose beloved daughter 
had died, said to me, "O I shall die with agony!" 
It was some help to quote to her the Savior's 
language, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even 
unto death." 

3. Beyond the blasphemy of Jew and Roman, 
the buffeting of brutal hands, the thorns and the 
scourge with its loaded lash ; beyond the nails and 
the fever in the wounds, the thirst and heat, as He 
"trod the winepress alone," was the agony echo- 
ing in the cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou 
forsaken Me?" Then He drank the bitterest 
dregs of the cup which might not pass; then He 
tasted death in its most awful significance — aliena- 
tion, abandonment, hell. None but a Divine Savior 
could proclaim over such woe, "It is finished." 
This opens the gate for the "Earnest Expectation." 
4. A long line of prophecy was finished. 

(1.) "The seed of the woman shall bruise the 
serpent's head." "A prophet like unto me shall 
the Lord raise up unto thee," said Moses. "There 



go The Earnest Expectation. 

shall come forth a Star out of Jacob," said Balaam. 
"He was led as a lamb to the slaughter," said 
Isaiah. "The Lord will suddenly come to His 
temple," said Malachi. "There cometh One after 
me," said the Baptist. 

Here under the shadows of an eclipse, this 
cry, "It is finished," ends the prophetic, line of 
those who foretold. 

(2.) If that line extend at all from Calvary 
down the future, its authority springs from Him 
who "finished" His work. It behooves us to heed 
His warning. "Many shall come in My name" — 
false prophets; "but go ye not after them." 

5. The main line is yet to be traced. 

The scarlet thread of sacrifice for sin was 
changed to the golden thread of salvation, ex- 
tending onward into heaven, when He cried, "It 
is finished." 

Before this preacher had a pulpit, he was 
seated in a farmhouse with only Clarke's Commen- 
tary for a help, aided by the chronology of Ussher, 
which, however uncertain, served its purpose. The 
line of bloody sacrifice fell into periods of about 
four centuries each. 

(1.) Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice 



Through the Great Eclipse. 91 



than Cain; there was doubtless a lamb which bled, 
and, though acceptable to God, it was not "finished." 

(2.) Leaping over some four times four cen- 
turies, during which period so corrupt became the 
human race that God sent a flood, and only Noah 
and his family were left; but it was not "finished," 
for on the new-washed world Noah erected his 
altar and laid upon it a bleeding lamb, pointing 
forward, as we now see, to Calvary. 

(3.) There followed about four hundred years 
more, when Abraham made his covenant, and 
sealed it with bloody sacrifice, showing that it was 
not "finished." 

(4.) The father of the faithful continued his 
wanderings, and his children followed, through 
the times of Isaac and Jacob to Moses, four or 
five hundred years, when the Lord ordered a taber- 
nacle, with its priesthood, its laws; but its victims 
bled, the lamb of sacrifice still pointing onward, 
showing that it was not "finished." The Lord 
takes time; "with Him a thousand years is as one 
day." 

(5.) The chosen seed settled in Canaan, and, 
after some five hundred years more, a temple was 
built on Mount Zion, whose costly splendor rivaled 
that of the sun. Its ritual, its four hundred 



02 The Earnest Expectation. 



singers, with Levite and priest and millions of 
worshipers thronging the religious capital of the 
earth, looked as though complete; but all was im- 
perfect. It was as bloody as it was glorious, for 
all was not "finished/' 

(6.) That temple was swept away in the wrath 
of God , and for seventy years Israel was in 
captivity. Being restored, the house was rebuilt, 
and the service re-established with the blood of 
the lamb prominent over all. This continued 
some five hundred years, until, 1,972 years ago, 
at nine o'clock, "the Lamb slain from the founda- 
tion of the world" was sacrificed for the sins of 
the world. The darkness fell, the earthquake 
came, the veil of the temple was rent from top 
to bottom on yonder Zion's hill. The priest then 
ministering received his discharge forever; for on 
Calvary, outside of the city, the Lamb of God 
shouted His victorious cry, "It is finished." 

The eclipse broke away from over the world, 
and there "remaineth no more sacrifice for sin." 

"We have an High Priest touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities;" we need no other. It 
is our privilege to point sinners to Him. A beauti- 
ful incident occurred in my first pastorate in the 
city where this sermon is written. The morning 



Through the: Great Eclipse;. 93 

theme had been, "It is finished;" in the evening 
the penitent form was surrounded with inquirers. 
I overheard a venerable saint consoling one of 
the inquirers by quoting the text of the morning, 
saying, "Remember, it is finished:" what better 
could we do than sing, 

"Let the water and the blood 
From Thy wounded side which flowed 
Be of sin the double cure, — 
Save from wrath and make me pure." 

That cry under that eclipse is the center of 
the Divine government in this world. 

(7.) We have shown that the altars of sacri- 
fice from Eden to Calvary found their interpreta- 
tion in the Lamb of God. Outside of the chosen 
people, the same truth applies to the human family. 
Where is there a land in which men are not con- 
scious of sin and needed redemption? Do not the 
African tribes, the Hindus, the Brahmins, the 
Buddhists, savage and civilized, long for recon- 
ciliation to their offended deities, offering "the 
fruit of the body or the blood of the flock for 
the sin of the soul?" There is but time to men- 
tion this wide field of thought. Every altar with 
its victim, in all lands and all ages, points to 
Calvary. 



94 Th£ Earnest Expectation. 

(8.) When we cast the forward look across the 
boundary of our own brief life, across that of the 
generation now living, and those to follow through 
the unlimited centuries before the "world, with the 
works that are therein, shall be burned up, and 
the heavens pass with a great noise," and the judg- 
ment shall have passed down though the endless 
cycles of eternity, the most prominent spectacle 
and significant event must continue to be that day 
of eclipse and that cry of victory, "It is finished." 

These are glorious outlines of the "earnest ex- 
pectation of the creation, waiting for the revealing 
of the sons of God." 



VII. 



THROUGH THE WRATH OF THE LAMB. 

"Fall on us, and hide us from the wrath of the 
Lamb." — Rev. vi, 16. 

The: fuller passage is, "The kings of the earth, 
and the great men, and the rich men, and the 
chief captains, and the mighty men, and every 
bondman, and every freeman, hid themselves in 
the caves and in the rocks of the mountains; and 
said to the mountains and rocks, Eall on us, and 
hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the 
throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the 
great day of His wrath is come, and who shall 
be able to stand?" 

I wish I and my readers might have heard 
Dr. John P. Durbin give utterance in his matchless 
way to this cry : "Fall on us and hide us from the 
face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from 
the wrath of the Lamb." I never heard him 
preach that sermon, but have heard great preachers 
allude to it. 

95 



96 The Earnest Expectation. 



We find in this scene a dark phase of the 
"Earnest 'Expectation" running through these 
discourses. 

To be subjected to malevolent power is a fear- 
ful thing; but when benevolence is changed to 
wrath, it is frightful. 

This is not out of harmony with the cautious, 
and possibly patronizing, concession that "there 
is a power in the universe which makes for 
righteousness." That seems a long way round to 
avoid the word God. 

Nature teaches this lesson very plainly in her 
mute way. 

I. The material world is loaded with forces 
calculated to make human life happy, but which, 
under what seem to be abnormal conditions, or 
even normal, become frightfully ruinous. Glycer- 
ine and nitrogen, each genial and serviceable, be- 
come, when differently combined, like love changed 
to hate. 

In the vegetable world, what is more delicious 
than the juices of early sweet-corn? But when 
turned to poison, scarcely anything is more deadly. 
And whence come the frightful wrecks of man- 
hood, womanhood, childhood, home, and country, 
but from the beneficent qualities of the hop, the 



Through the; Wrath of* the; Lamb. 97 

grape, and the grain turned into "liquid fire and dis- 
tilled damnation?" 

II. How self-evident is the same law operating 
in our human relations. 

1. Often are the sweetest of personal friend- 
ships turned into the bitterest hostility. In the 
long course of history, royal families have dis- 
graced the human race by family rivalries and 
murder, nor has this departed from the family 
circle in our more enlightened times. Scarcely any 
of us but have had occasion to say, "I do well 
to be angry." Where is there more desperate 
hate than between those whose affianced love has 
been of the warmest? What righteous indigna- 
tion is awakened by the scenes of divorce courts ! 

2. I have never been able to forget the ex- 
pression on the face of a mother as she pursued 
her own disobedient daughter fleeing into the face 
of the coming storm. It was an apocalypse of the 
possibilities of maternal love acting as wrath. 

3. There is a story told by a celebrated 
preacher, who gave it as within his own acquaint- 
ance. A man of some wealth, who lived in the 
South, sent his son to a Northern university, abun- 
dantly supplying more than enough money for 
expenses. The son became dissipated, imperious 

7 



98 The Earnest Expectation. 



in his demands for more money, blighted his 
father's hopes, wore out his patience, and when 
at home, meeting his father one day in the street, 
brutally struck him. The father went alone to 
a near-by forest, and there was heard to utter 
three agonizing shrieks; then deliberately returned, 
and, rinding his son, drove him from his door, 
ordering him to be gone, declaring, "You are no 
longer my son." What a fearful echo from that 
scene described by the Divine Savior, — "Depart 
from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared 
for the devil and his angels." 

III. From these near-by and feebler hints, 
showing how love may work as wrath, turn we 
to the setting of our text. First glance at the 
vision itself. As the Lamb before the throne opened 
the seals, there appeared a succession of symbolic 
horses; the white representing purity; the red, 
the sanguine experiences of humanity; the black 
representing judgment; the pale horse of death; 
then the scene of our text is thrust into the pro- 
cession, the "souls under the altar crying, How 
long, O Lord, dost Thou not avenge our blood 
on them that dwell on the earth?" 

Then the sixth seal is opened. There comes 
a great earthquake ; the sun becomes black as sack- 



Through the; Wrath of the; Lamb. 99 

cloth of hair, and the moon as blood; the stars 
fall to the earth as a fig-tree casteth her untimely 
figs when shaken by a mighty wind; the heaven 
departed as a scroll; every mountain and island 
was moved out of its place; men of all classes 
called for "rocks and mountains to fall on them, 
and hide them from the wrath of the Lamb." 

There is no incongruity, as may appear at 
first sight, in the "wrath of the Lamb." 

The Lamb is the symbol of innocence as well 
as of sacrifice for the sins of others. The idea 
of blood atonement for sin is as wide as the human 
conscience, and the sense of guilt afflicting the 
race everywhere, in savage and civilized peoples. 
Victims of some kind have bled and burned on 
altars erected by men to appease the wrath of 
their gods, whether dimly or clearly apprehended. 
This was the chosen emblem for the Hebrew, and 
terminated in "the Lamb of God that taketh away 
the sin of the world." 

There seems almost an absurdity when the 
Lamb is introduced in this Book of Revelation 
as receiving the roll with its seven seals, and pro- 
ceeding to open them; but this closing volume 
of the Bible was not designed for an orderly por- 
trait gallery. It seems to be a revelation of the 



4* ore. 



ioo The Earnest Expectation. 



far-reaching principles or elements of the Divine 
government as they apply to all human history 
in all times. 

The Lamb of God, therefore, appears before 
us in this vision as God's offering for sin, the em- 
bodiment of gentleness and love, the Revealer of 
the Divine mind to men, as well as the Judge over 
all, blessed for evermore. 

IV. So far we have purposely omitted any dis- 
cussion of theories of interpretation as applied to 
this book. Great has been the mystification per- 
petrated on the world by theorists. We hope to 
avoid the addition of any slightest fleck of dimness. 

1. One method may be called the chronological, 
which attempts to lay out the Apocalypse in his- 
torical sections, describing when this and that 
scene was fulfilled, and in so far ended and rele- 
gated to the past. This, however, breaks down 
and is unsatisfactory as well as belittling. 

2. The foregoing method has naturally led up 
to Millenarianism, which, planting itself mainly on 
the twentieth chapter, has been startling the world 
by frequent advents since before the days of 
Christ, and, though somewhat more cautious in 
our day, has not passed away from the ranks of 
manv of the best leaders of Christendom, espe- 



Through the Wrath otf the; Lamb. ioi 

cially of the revivalistic type. These teach us that 
the present dispensation is a failure, and can only 
be rescued from final defeat by the appearance 
of Jesus Christ again in person on the face of 
the earth. Others map out the whole course of 
human destiny, so that you can see it on their 
charts, as if they had gotten back of all Divine 
mystery. This begets, on the one hand, indiffer- 
ence to duty, or on the other, fanatical enthusiasm. 
It reminds one of the old Bible-reading saint to 
whom was presented a commentary on the Book 
of Revelation. When inquired of how she enjoyed 
its teachings, she replied, "I understood the book 
very well before I read the commentary." 

3. This book, the climax of the Bible, whether 
we regard it as a dream or a waking vision, is 
a drama, not cut into parts by limitations of time 
chronologically arranged. It is not a book of dates, 
but of events under Divine regulation. Higher 
and wider than all these, it is a revelation of the 
principles or laws of the Divine administration, 
whereby God is overseeing in the present, as well 
as in the past and in the future, everything 
affecting His government over men. 

In this view, what a startling revelation have 
we in the "wrath of the Lamb," or Divine love 
turned to anger! 



io2 The Earnest Expectation. 



Art has attempted to express many a scene 
in the Apocalypse; but where is the genius 
sufficiently elevated into the realm of Divine things 
to put on canvas this vision, where men are flee- 
ing, and calling for rocks and mountains to hide 
them from the wrath of the Lamb? 

4. Men may sneer at the idea of hell ; they 
may philosophize until they imagine it is blotted 
out; they may dash after success in winning the 
world, forgetful of the judgment to come; they 
may revel and feast with all sensual hilarity; they 
may generously hope that there is no Divine 
punishment for guilt, — but this terrific scene, with 
the Lamb of God in anger, stands beyond the 
reach of all these follies and powerless madness, 
which is destined to the doom of eternal damnation. 

5. What has become, in this outlook, of the 
"earnest expectation of the creature?" 

The whole of the case is not in. Look forward 
to the seventh chapter. Therein is a vision of four 
angels standing on the four corners of the earth 
(such was the cosmogony of the date of this 
Apocalypse), holding the four winds of the earth, 
and another angel ascending from the east, com- 
missioned with the work of sealing the servants 
of God. There is a halt in the Divine judgment 



Through the: Wrath of the: Lamb. 103 

—wrath is not at once executed. Men do often 
take advantage of this fact, and sin away their 
day of grace; but, according to this scene, God 
gives to every man a full and fair chance to 
escape from sin and wrath, and to be sealed as 
one of the mighty host gathering before His 
throne, while the four winds of wrath are with- 
held from smiting the earth. Thousands of the 
tribes of Israel are sealed. The still more count- 
less multitudes of the Gentiles escape from the 
coming wrath. God offers salvation to the most 
benighted soul on the face of the earth. When- 
ever a human being strikes the line between 
obedience and disobedience, he there has an oppor- 
tunity to settle his own destiny now and forever. 
As Bishop William Taylor says of the African 
chief whom he visited in his dying hour, and heard 
him call, "O Nishwa, Nishwa, I am your man," 
and then comment, "If God did not hear and 
answer, He is not the Fellow [no irreverence in 
William Taylor was intended] I take Him to 
be." A dim ray of light leads to God's throne ; or, 
avoided, points to endless night. 

While teaching a class in comparative re- 
ligions in the University of the Pacifiic, we had 
come to Clarke's sentiment discounting the impre- 



104 The Earnest Expectation. 

catory Psalms, in his work on the "Ten Great Re- 
ligions." I mentioned my impression to the class 
that either Clarke had not carefully studied those 
Psalms, or had never come to spiritual battles 
where he found the need of such swords of the 
Spirit as are represented in them. Just then an 
earthquake shook the building in which we were 
seated while the chandelier waved to and fro, 
and the walls and foundations quivered all around 
us. There leaped forth the quotation from Paul, 
"Behold the severity and the goodness of God!" 
It is not often one has an earthquake to empha- 
size a lesson or a Scripture quotation. But there 
was a line of harmony extending from that shak- 
ing building through the Psalm, and the altars 
of sacrifice and the myriads of human beings on 
earth, and the innumerable hosts of the redeemed 
joining the hallelujahs of the angels round about 
the throne, toward which the eyes of "Earnest 
Expectation" are ever looking. 



VIII. 



INTO THE NEW JERUSALEM. 

"I, John, saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, com- 
ing down from God out of heaven, prepared 
as a bride adorned for her husband." — Rev. 
xxi, 2. 

The title of this sermon may suggest unhappy 
recollections of many a solo falling far short of 
an interpretation of the theme. Let us dismiss 
such disappointing torture in favor of some rare 
rendering of that great composition. 

I. A city is a great magnet to attract man- 
kind. Why it should be so is explained, in part, 
because it responds to the love of the artistic in 
its streets, buildings, laws, and parks, while the 
rural home, in spite of its opportunities, is too 
often very lacking in these satisfying elements. 
So that the country boy flees to the city and its 
perils. The city is also an expression of human 
energy, always fascinating to the best element 
in man. The city offers opportunity for business 
105 



io6 The Earnest Expectation. 



enterprise and gain. It appeals to the love of fel- 
lowship and brotherliness, and is therefore attrac- 
tive to all, except the misanthrope or the dreamer. 

II. The Book of Revelation closes its appeal 
to mankind under the symbol of a great city. The 
name is the most significant possible. Why should 
it be called Jerusalem? Ask a New Englander to 
name his favorite city, the popular answer would 
be Boston. Come a little west, and it will 
be New York; farther west, and there is a 
growing disposition to say Chicago; while San 
Francisco for the time being centralizes the at- 
tractivness of the Pacific Coast. Doubtless some 
of these in the future will take a back seat. Speak 
to an Englishman about a great city, and he will 
say London. To the people of God, whether under 
the old dispensation or its outcome, the kingdom 
of heaven, Jerusalem, City of Peace, is the name 
to abide. 

III. It may help our vision for a glance at this 
great city to clear away some of the incongruities 
and absurdities of a misleading literalism. 

This false method is the bane of religious 
teaching and interpretation. It has led to endless 
misunderstanding and difference among theological 
writers, speculative discussion and false interpreta- 



Into the New Jerusalem. 107 

tion, no matter whether the theme be the Garden 
of Eden and the Creation, the giving of the law, 
the interpretation of foreordination and election, 
universal redemption and free gace, or the vision 
of prophecy, the poetry of the Psalms, and espe- 
cially of this marvelous drama, the Apocalypse. 

To literalize and materialize this vision of the 
New Jerusalem would be to miss its great reve- 
lation. 

1. We have here a city descending through 
the air, balloon-like, coming down somewhere on 
the face of the earth; a city with buildings three 
hundred and seventy-five miles high; compared to 
our modern skyscraper, this were monstrous in- 
deed, if we forget its hint at the "many mansions," 
with room for all. 

2. A city with twelve gates, useless though 
each guarded by an angel; for they are never 
closed day or night. It is safe. 

3. Its streets of gold ; its buildings of the same, 
with their unbearable blinding crystalline light. 
How grotesque the whole spectacle, the same as 
would characterize the entire vision of the Apoca- 
lypse, interpreted with belittling literalism! 

IV. May our eyes be opened to behold some- 
thing of this City of God ! 



io8 The Earnest Expectation. 



1. First, it is a descending city, having been 
a long time on its way earthward. We know 
not why it took so long to prepare for Noah and his 
altar, Abraham and his posterity, Moses and the 
law, Jesus and the redemption, the spread of the 
Gospel, and the successive reformations and re- 
vivals, down to our day, when the Tabernacle of 
God is more extensively with men than ever before. 

2. There is a future tense to this vision. Most 
of it is in the great hereafter. Childhood is 
peculiarly sensitive to the hopes of the heavenly 
world. We can recall our fondness for hymns 
such as, "There is a land of pure delight," and 
"My heavenly home is bright and fair." 

This does not pass out of our hearts, and, after 
the strenuous days of middle life, it generally be- 
comes more and more attractive as the sunset 
draws near. 

No Millenarian or Pre-Adventist theories should 
be allowed to obscure the inspiring prospect of 
immortality and eternal life beyond the resurrec- 
tion of the dead and the great day of judgment, 
where "we know not what we shall be, but we shall 
be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." 

3. In the warfare through which we must pass 
to that future home, it were a hopeless struggle 



Into the; New Jerusalem. 109 

if "the tabernacle of God were not with men on 
the earth." He is with us in His natural provi- 
dence : "The very hairs of your head are all num- 
bered," "Take no thought for the morrow." He 
is with us in our physical manhood; "I am fear- 
fully and wonderfully made;"' "Your bodies are 
the temples of the Holy Ghost." He is with us 
in a directing- providence, against which we often 
vainly waste our strength: "I will guide you with 
mine eye." He is with us in special revelations of 
truth spoken by inspired men, and chiefly through 
the lips of Jesus. No man following His words 
Can lose his way. He dwells with us in the in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit, quickening the con- 
science, enlightening the understanding, and com- 
forting the soul. He is with the whole human race 
in its innate sense of righteousness and hatred of 
wrong, so long as these laws written in their heart 
are not obscured or blotted out by willful dis- 
obedience. God's tabernacle is with men when 
they pray in secret, or worship publicly in prayer 
and praise. 

"Then let our songs abound, 
And every tear be dry; 
We're marching through Immanuel's ground 
To fairer worlds on high." 



no Tut Earnest Expectation. 



This vision of the Holy City includes both 
worlds, — that which now is as a sort of suburb 
to the New Jerusalem, and that which is to come, 
as limitless in its extent and existence as the 
vision of John's prophecies. 

V. Turn we to look a little more definitely at 
some of the characteristics of this great city. 

1. It was a city with walls. Fortunately, in our 
day, no walls are needed ; they belong to the 
ages of savagery and human helplessness, when 
castle walls, moat and ditch, were needed against 
tribal hatred rendering life insecure from man and 
beast. But in this vision walls mean safety. 

2. The extent of those walls indicates the roomi- 
ness of the Home: they are three hundred and 
seventy-five miles to a side, or fifteen hundred miles 
around the city. Great London is less than fifty 
miles to a side. A large city can stand on a 
mile square: what, then, means this unthinkable 
vastness, but a hope for countless myriads of im- 
mortal souls saved from sin? 

3. What of its buildings? Are they not ample, 
towering up as high as the walls are long, of 
golden splendor, the costliest thing in this world, 
brilliant as crystal, and such to be the home of 
the soul forever? I can not forget the personal 



Into the New Jerusalem. hi 



invitation of Professor Merrick to call and see 
him and his wife in one of the many mansions 
which Christ has gone to prepare. 

4. The streets of a city add very much to its 
health, comfort, and beauty. Those of the New 
Jerusalem, how they contrast with poor old 
Jerusalem now — narrow, grimy, rough, dog- 
haunted, squalid — nothing much more disappoint- 
ing than a visit to modern Jerusalem! But in 
the vision, the "former things have passed away," 
and the streets are pure gold of the same glassy 
sheen as the city itself. "Gold many hunted, 
sweat, and bled for gold/' in this sordid life ; there, 
it is -but pavement beneath the feet. 

5. Water, so necessary for our thirst in desert, 
in famine, in city ; so beautiful as it leaps in moun- 
tain spray, in cataract falls, or binds the earth with 
broad ribbons of beauty, or mantles her shoulders 
with the garment of the mighty seas, — is not lack- 
ing in the Holy City. The River of the Water of 
Life springs from the midst of the throne, and 
rolls its pure flood, "clear as crystal," down the 
entire length of the streets. As the Abana dashes 
from Lebanon through Damascus groves, and 
sparkles its way to every part of the oldest city 
on earth, so in the New Jerusalem there is no 



ii2 Th£ Earnest Expectation. 

lack or thirst, but all "drink of the water of life 
freely." 

6. There is shade and fruit; for on either 
side of the river is the Tree of Life, perpetually 
bearing, and the inhabitants thereof "eat of the 
Tree of Life which is in the midst of the Paradise 
of God." 

7. Is the city well lighted? We know how 
important this is ; how, in our cities, light reduces 
crime, contributes to comfort and safety ; how the 
electric flame caught by Ben Franklin has turned 
night into day; "so there shall be no night there." 
Once, when in the flesh, Jesus turned literally into 
light on Mount Hermon ; His garments became white 
as the light. There is that in some persons which 
seems to bring a light with their very presence; 
and when they are gone, a shadow falls. Myriads 
of such will be in the Holy Ciy forever. "The 
Glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the 
Light thereof." 

8. What of its population and its company? 
A city were more desolate than the wilderness 
without society. That of the Holy City is ex- 
clusive and select; but only toward those who 
would be less at home there than in hell, and who, 
if admitted, would ruin heaven; for "without are 



Into the New Jerusalem. 113 

dogs [the depraved], — sorcerers, whoremongers, 
murderers, idolaters, and whosoever loveth and 
maketh a lie." These r can not pass the Gates of 
Pearl with their angel guard, though open night and 
day. 

I am not able to comprehend the possibility of 
being happy knowing that any fellow-man espe- 
cially those of my love, are shut out from that 
city; and yet they shut themselves away in this 
life. My brother minister had a family of bright 
children, his prodig-al brother was welcome to his 
home, and staid until the risk developed, of the 
whole household being ruined by the bad inmate; 
and though a brother, that tender-hearted Chris- 
tian minister banished him. If he could endure 
such execution of righteous law in behalf of his 
children, may it not explain how God the Father, 
and Jesus, the Lamb of God, may provide, in mercy, 
a home for the elect, and another for the wicked, 
more tolerable to them than heaven could be, 
though its name be hell? 

The state of society in the New Jerusalem may 
be judged in part by its escapes. "There shall 
be no more death." The prevalence of death is 
oppressive. Hearken in the night-time to the hum 
of the sound of the insect world, and remember 
8 



H4 The: Earnest Expectation. 

all will be dead when the snows fall; or listen to 
the cheery notes of the countless bird-world, their 
beauty and activity doomed to die; all animate 
life sweeping like so many waves across the world. 
With man, the globe is a graveyard; and, most 
horrible of all, since the time of the murder of 
Cain till Mukden's climax of human slaughter, death 
hath "reigned from Adam till now." The Son of 
man tasted death for every man. This is why, in 
the New Jerusalem, "there shall be no more death : 
neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be 
any more pain, for the former things are passed 
away." 

These are the negative qualities of the society 
of heaven; but who shall be there? They will 
surely know each other ; for how could they be less 
intelligent than in this life? 

It may help to compress our view to mention 
again the walls of the city so representative. 

Each of the twelve gates a single pearl, bear- 
ing the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. This 
harks back to the Church of the old dispensation, 
out of which were sealed the hundred and forty- 
four thousand expressive of an unlimited num- 
ber of the saved, including patriarchs and prophets 
whom one desires to meet and know. 

The foundations of the walls of the city are 



Into the New Jerusalem. 115 

twelve precious stones. At the bottom, jasper, 
inscribed "Petros ;" likely, next above, the blue 
sapphire, inscribed "John;" and on through the 
twelve flashing lights of beauty, chalcedony, 
emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, 
ichrysoprasus, jacinth, and the amethist, inscribed 
"with apostolic names, standing for the Church 
of Jesus Christ, whom no man can number," no 
census taker hath ever counted. Should they ever 
repeat what is now ringing round the world more 
and more, "All hail the power of Jesus' name!" 
we must join in the song. Or should that be 
left out of the chorus of the ten thousand and 
thousands of thousands singing, "Hallelujah! for 
the Lord God the Almighty reigneth!" we must 
wash our robes and be there to join. 

9. The government of a city is still more impor- 
tant, in some respects, than its society ; and especially 
is this so in the Holy City. "The throne of God 
and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants 
shall serve Him." There will be no austerity of 
dreadful character. "They shall see His face, and 
His name shall be in their foreheads," and "they 
shall reign for ever and ever." In this life re- 
generation stamps the features with its mark, 
often very discoverable, and, if it has its way, 
will grow into a shining countenance; but pain 



n6 The Earnest Expectation. 



may distort and sorrow becloud. In the Heavenly 
Jerusalem they shall bear His name in their fore- 
heads as the badge of heirship, being co-heirs with 
Jesus Christ, to reign with Him for ever and ever. 

This sermon is in response to more than one 
request, but chiefly one. A few years ago two 
college classmates, with their wives, stood upon 
the snow-white shores of the Gulf of Mexico, as 
they beat upon the island of Santa Rosa in Pen- 
sacola Bay. Three of us started for our boat as the 
sun was descending toward the gulf in the west- 
ern sky. Looking backward, there was a vision 
of a face looking sunward, framed in the blue 
of sky and gulf, spangled with the foam of the 
wave-crests dashing inward toward the land. It 
was a rare background for a face with which I 
have journeyed many a year through life's con- 
flicts, sorrows, and griefs; but it was transformed 
in the light of that vision, with which it was evi- 
dently enwrapped. It was worth the long journey 
and the life conflict to behold. It seemed as though 
the face belonged to that other world, where we 
expect to dwell with those who have gone out 
of our family circle, into that innumerable com- 
pany. Because the wearer of that face asked it, 
this sermon has been recalled as one more ex- 
pression as the "Earnest Expectation" 



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